ABSTRACT
This chapter describes theorising and explanation; illustrating theory; discussion of theory in education research; and interdisciplinarity. It explains about approaches to explaining education rather than theorising about education and discusses education theory. Community of practice is an idea generated by Jean Lave, a social anthropologist, and Etienne Wenger, a ‘social learning’ theorist, and others, which has been extraordinarily influential in education research. All education research, and social research more generally, works by drawing attention to what is important in an observation or event. Categorising learning styles has little, what social scientists would call, ecological validity. The term ecological signals an interest in the ways in which development is shaped by context and Bronfenbrenner saw, at first from personal experience, that those studying child development needed to consider how the environment supported or limited the child.
