ABSTRACT
In common usage the word ‘theory’ has something uncertain and tenuous about it. It is thought to be the product of speculation, but not totally disconnected from practice. Theory is based on accepted work, or on empirical results and observation going beyond just picking out common features, as celebrated in the last chapter. The theory attempts to explain the process even though it is bound to fail in the long run. Sooner or later a better theory will supplant the present one. (I used to worry about this and tried to explain the insecurity of theories to my students, but not many of them let it trouble them a lot!)
The theories discussed here will not be directly about education, that is for the Epilogue. As Rosalind Driver (1977) argued in one of her last publications, educational theories may be normative and goal-directed, but theories about the processes of learning are not. They are semantic, concerned with understanding, and lie in the domain of social science. Goal-directed theories are positivist since the method employed is selfvalidating. All students, including those who may prefer autonomous methods of learning, should be able to profit from the semantic results of our explorations.
