{"id":1254,"date":"2019-05-09T14:51:46","date_gmt":"2019-05-09T21:51:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/?p=1254"},"modified":"2019-05-10T13:04:34","modified_gmt":"2019-05-10T20:04:34","slug":"writing-a-thesis-you-need-to-know-about-the-levels-of-theory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/?p=1254","title":{"rendered":"Writing a thesis? You need to know about the levels of theory . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"<p><div id=\"attachment_1292\" style=\"width: 160px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/?attachment_id=1292\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-1292\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1292\" class=\"size-thumbnail wp-image-1292\" src=\"http:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/layers-150x150.png\" alt=\"Designed by Freepik from www.flaticon.com\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" srcset=\"https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/layers-150x150.png 150w, https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/layers-300x300.png 300w, https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/layers.png 512w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1292\" class=\"wp-caption-text\"><em><span style=\"color: #339966;\">[Image designed by Freepik from www.flaticon.com]<\/span><\/em><\/p><\/div>I was just working with a student today, and it seemed appropriate to discuss the levels of theory. <em>(Ghads! I posted this yesterday, and noted some serious revisions were needed!)<\/em><\/p>\n<h1><\/h1>\n<h1>There are different levels of theory:<\/h1>\n<ol>\n<li>Philosophical perspective (i.e., ontology, epistemology, teleology, etc.).<\/li>\n<li>Theoretical perspective (anti-positivist vs. positivist).<\/li>\n<li>Background theory (of your field such as distance education).<\/li>\n<li>Focal theory (for example, maybe you are using the community of inquiry to guide your study).<\/li>\n<li>Data theory (the methods you choose, how you collect your data, and how you analyze your data).<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>They are all connected.<\/p>\n<p>You will need to understand where you are in terms of your philosophical approach to the world:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Ontology: What is reality? The nature of the social phenomenon\/a you are studying.\n<ul>\n<li>Subjectivist: nominalist, idealist, relativist.<\/li>\n<li>Objectivist: realist; there is an underlying reality.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Epistemology: How can we come to know reality? (i.e., objectivism, subjectivism, etc.).\n<ul>\n<li>Subjectivist: There is a world, but it is understood differently by different people (relativist); or, reality is socially constructed (nominalist; social constructionist).<\/li>\n<li>Objectivist: The underlying reality can be observed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>For example, i<strong>f I identify myself to be within the subjectivist camp:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I will likely position myself with the anti-positivist theoretical perspective. I might choose:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Interpretivism (phenomenology, hermeneutics, symbolic interactionism),<\/li>\n<li>Social constructionism (i.e., the social construction of reality),<\/li>\n<li>Critical theory,<\/li>\n<li>Feminist theory,<\/li>\n<li>Post-modernism, etc.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Say, I select &#8220;interpretivism,&#8221; I am likely to draw upon some of the following [note that these will help you form your research questions (RQs)]:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><em>Phenomenology<\/em> (RQ: What is the lived, pre-reflective experience of adult learners when they start an online class?)<\/li>\n<li><em>Ethnography<\/em> (RQ: What are the characteristics of older adults who take online classes?)<\/li>\n<li><em>Case study<\/em> (RQ: What learning strategies are used by adults in 1) online learning for a photography class and 2) an art appreciation class?)<\/li>\n<li><em>Grounded theory<\/em> (RQ: What are the attitudes of elderly people who use mobile devices for online shopping?)<\/li>\n<li><em>Narrative<\/em> (RQ: How does an adult learner experience his\/her first online class?)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The background theory of, for example, distance education would involve<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>A conceptualization of what distance education is. What are the inclusion and exclusion criteria?<\/li>\n<li>The history of distance education.<\/li>\n<li>Characteristics of distance education.<\/li>\n<li>What does \u2018<em>teaching\u2019<\/em> mean within the context of distance education?<\/li>\n<li>What does \u2018<em>learning\u2019<\/em> mean within the context of distance education?<\/li>\n<li>What are the processes involved in distance education?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>I will choose focal theories that agree with anti-positivist philosophy.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>The focal theory is often used as a framework for structuring and guiding your study. While you might discuss various focal theories in a literature review, you should only use one to guide and structure your research.<\/li>\n<li>Many focal theories can be used across philosophies. For example, I have seen the <a href=\"https:\/\/coi.athabascau.ca\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">community of inquiry<\/a> used in positivist studies in which numeric counts of the number of times a social-presence indicator occurred compared to the number of times a cognitive-presence indicator occurred. Or, most times, people use the community of inquiry for qualitative studies (qualitatively coding transcripts) and reflecting on what presences occurred.<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/edutechwiki.unige.ch\/en\/Equivalency_theorem\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Equivalency theorem<\/a> can be used across philosophies, too.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Data theory: the methodology and methods you choose in order to answer your research question need to be \u201ccommensurate\u201d (i.e., in agreement) with the above theories\/philosophies. So, as an interpretivist studying distance education and using the community of inquiry as my focal theory, I would consider:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Semi-structured interviews for data collection and\/or<\/li>\n<li>Open-ended questions on a questionnaire and\/or<\/li>\n<li>Focus groups and\/or<\/li>\n<li>Observation (for descriptive purposes)<\/li>\n<li>But, not likely Likert-scale questionnaires, multiple choice, or observation (tick-box, count-em-up).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Make sense?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was just working with a student today, and it seemed appropriate to discuss the levels of theory. (Ghads! I posted this yesterday, and noted some serious revisions were needed!) There are different levels of theory: Philosophical perspective (i.e., ontology, epistemology, teleology, etc.). Theoretical perspective (anti-positivist vs. positivist). Background theory (of your field such as [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[105,107,12,31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1254","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-e-research","category-educational-technology","category-phd-2","category-research"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1254"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1254"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1254\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1306,"href":"https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1254\/revisions\/1306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1254"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1254"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kooleady.ca\/thoughts\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1254"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}