ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses certain features of the manipulationist theory of causality, as they pertain to evidence-based practice (EBP). Manipulationist accounts come in two broad categories, such as agency theory and intervention theory. Agency theories emphasize the connection between causation and distinctively human agency. Peter Menzies and Huw Price think that ordinary notions of cause and effect have an essential connection with ability to intervene in the world, i.e. to act as agents. Agency theory explains causal asymmetry and its temporal orientation by invoking a means-end framework. In the educational sciences, “intervention” seems to be used mainly to denote some form of experimental studies where one tries out a method of instruction, new materials, a program, or a strategy to see how it works. It is essential to be aware that any intervention is inserted into pre-existing conditions. The chapter focuses on the abstract causal arrow(s) between X and Y in terms of a thicker causal terminology.
