ABSTRACT
This book arose from a belief that this field of work has been strong in data and weak in theory. Any summary of the ideas offered cannot amount to more than ‘notes towards a definition of theory’. The central concern of future work must be with a theory of learners and learning which might be adequate to interpret and guide research, and even a vague perception of this will have methodological implications. While these two issues are dealt with below, our summary must first draw attention to two related features that have arisen in several of the contributions. They concern respectively models of scientific knowledge and the importance of the context and purposes of people’s knowledge.
