What Makes a Good Theory? How Do We Make a Theory Good?

Written by Rob Davies

NoteOverview

This week we work to develop our skills so that we can think and talk clearly about theory.

You can navigate to each in the side bar on the right.

Lectures

Interactive lecture – What makes a good theory? How do we make a theory good: watch this to get started on learning and thinking about what what theories are and do, and how we can think critically about them

You can watch the lecture for the video using the video playback windows shown next. The lecture is broken into five parts, each about 10-20 minutes long.

  1. We need to talk about theory
  2. What theories are and do
  3. Why talking about this stuff is useful
  4. How we can build or develop theories
  5. What Makes a Good Theory, and How Do We Make a Theory Good?
Tip

During the lecture, I suggest some questions you can think about. Reflecting on your responses to these questions will help you to learn.

You can download the lecture slides as a .html file you can open in any browser.

The slides end with a references list but don’t worry about reading what’s in the references list, we give you recommended readings in Section 2.

Tip

The slides presented in the next videos can be downloaded as a web page: doing-theory-good.html.

When you download the file, double click on it to open it in your usual web browser for viewing.

Next, you can see the lecture elements. We recommend that you watch them in sequence.

  1. We need to talk about theory (~7 minutes). Why we need to talk about theories. Why this will be useful, for life, for students. How we will do this.

  1. What theories are and do (~20 minutes). We look at some ways that critical thinkers have identified what a theory is and what theories do.

  1. Why talking about this stuff is useful (~19 minutes). Why are we bothering to think or talk about this stuff? Isn’t it obvious? Is it worth the effort? The problems caused by not talking about theory, theoretical amnesia. Learning to tell the difference between theories and theory-like objects.

  1. How we can build or develop theories (~20 minutes). Methods for building theories, ways of thinking about building and developing theories

  1. What Makes a Good Theory, and How Do We Make a Theory Good? (18 minutes). We reflect on examples of theory to learn how to evaluate theories.

Reading

TipEasy access to readings

All reading is accessible via the library.

  • Essential: We expect you to be familiar with these reading. You will be assessed on this.
  • Recommended: We highly recommend these readings. They often provide a different perspective, or explain things in a different way.
  • Optional: Further readings for those interested.

This week, the reading is optional but Recommended:

Back to top