Learning to Theorize: A Four-Step Strategy

This book describes a constructive theorizing strategy that graduate students and applied searchers can use to improve their beliefs about contemporary social problems. Throughout the use of compelling questions and examples, Mithaug shows readers how to implement this (four-step) strategy to construct explanations for uncertainties about how things work, how they ought to work and what should be done about them. He begins the book with an explanation of the practical features of constructive theorizing and shows how it mirrors general problem solving, practical reasoning, and self-regulated learning. He then demonstrates how to separate the facts, values, and actions of a situation in order to clarify and understand their relationship as well as how a thinking strategy assists in learning to theorize better. This book will enable readers to separate questions of fact, value, and action; explain their differences and similarities; and summarize their explanations in a theory that reconstructs those facts, values, and actions in a more credible and valuable way.