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Author: Robert Dubin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
Author: Robert Dubin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 328
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Book Description
Author: Richard A. Swanson
Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers
ISBN: 1609947339
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 238
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Book Description
Theory matters in applied disciplines—fields that apply scholarly research to professional practice, such as management, social work, health care, human resource development, education, and many others. Because these disciplines deal with human beings in the real world, a flawed theory can result in actual harm to people and institutions. When faced with a professional problem, practitioners resort to the latest fad or simply throw everything and anything at it because of the lack of sound theory. Scholars deal with problems by slicing them into small segments to study them but fail to address the practical implications. What's needed is a way to unite research and practice to create robust theory. This is exactly what Richard Swanson and Thomas Chermack offer here: a complete, five-step method for developing sound, field-tested theory in applied disciplines. Unlike many existing methods, which cover only the initial conceptualization of a theory, the authors offer a complete approach, from conceptualizing a theory to creating relevant assessment criteria, establishing a research agenda to test the theory's validity, applying the theoretical concepts in the real world, and using that experience to further refine and improve the theory. The method is not restricted to any single discipline, nor is it beholden to any research ideology. Swanson and Chermack provide a set of tools for each phase of the process, making this book accessible and applicable to a wide audience. And in addition to examples in each chapter, they offer two extended case examples of complete theory building. With flawed theories impeding the development of many applied disciplines, this book is desperately needed.
Author: Franca Trubiano
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 131751033X
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 681
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Book Description
Building Theories speaks to the value of words in architecture. It addresses the author’s fascination with the voices of architects, engineers, builders, and craftspeople whose ideas about building have been captured in text. It discusses the content of treatises, essays, articles, and letters by those who have been, throughout history, committed to the art of building. In this, Building Theories argues for the return of a practice of architectural theory that is set amongst building, buildings, and builders. This journey of close reading reinterprets the words of Vitruvius, Alberti, de L’Orme, Le Camus de Mézières, Boullée, Laugier, Rondelet, Semper, Viollet-le-Duc, Hübsch, Bötticher, Berlage, Muthesius, Wagner, Behrendt, Gropius, and Arup. With chapters dedicated to texts from antiquity, the Renaissance, and the nineteenth century, and with a critical eye on architectural theory popularized in the Anglo-Saxon world post-1968, readers are introduced to a wider, more inclusive definition of architectural ideas. Building Theories considers how contemporary scholarship has steered away from the topic of building in its reluctance to admit that both design and construction are central to its concerns. In response, it argues for a realignment of architecture with the concept of techné, with a dual commitment to fabrica e ratio, with a productive return to l’art de bien bastir, with the accurate translation of the term Baukunst, and with an appeal to the architect’s ‘composite mind.’ Students, practitioners, and educators will identify in Building Theories ways of thinking that strive for the integration of design with construction; reject the supposed primacy of the former over the latter; recognize how aesthetics are an insufficient scaffold for subtending the subject of architectural ethics; and accept, without reservation, that material transformations have always been at the origins of built form.
Author: David Danks
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319727877
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 282
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Book Description
This book explores new findings on the long-neglected topic of theory construction and discovery, and challenges the orthodox, current division of scientific development into discrete stages: the stage of generation of new hypotheses; the stage of collection of relevant data; the stage of justification of possible theories; and the final stage of selection from among equally confirmed theories. The chapters, written by leading researchers, offer an interdisciplinary perspective on various aspects of the processes by which theories rationally should, and descriptively are, built. They address issues such as the role of problem-solving and heuristic reasoning in theory-building; how inferences and models shape the pursuit of scientific knowledge; the relation between problem-solving and scientific discovery; the relative values of the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic view of theories in understanding theory construction; and the relation between ampliative inferences, heuristic reasoning, and models as a means for building new theories and knowledge. Through detailed arguments and examinations, the volume collectively challenges the orthodox view’s main tenets by characterizing the ways in which the different “stages” are logically, temporally, and psychologically intertwined. As a group, the chapters provide several attempts to answer long-standing questions about the possibility of a unified conceptual framework for building theories and formulating hypotheses.
Author: Dominic A. Infante
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780881337099
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 588
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Book Description
Author: Lewis R. Binford
Publisher: University of California Press
ISBN: 0520303407
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 583
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Book Description
Many consider Lewis Binford to be the single most influential figure in archaeology in the last half-century. His contributions to the "New Archaeology" changed the course of the field, as he argued for the development of a scientifically rigorous framework to guide the excavation and interpretation of the archaeological record. This book, the culmination of Binford's intellectual legacy thus far, presents a detailed description of his methodology and its significance for understanding hunter-gatherer cultures on a global basis. This landmark publication will be an important step in understanding the great process of cultural evolution and will change the way archaeology proceeds as a scientific enterprise. This work provides a major synthesis of an enormous body of cultural and environmental information and offers many original insights into the past. Binford helped pioneer what is now called "ethnoarchaeology"—the study of living societies to help explain cultural patterns in the archaeological record—and this book is grounded on a detailed analysis of ethnographic data from about 340 historically known hunter-gatherer populations. The methodological framework based on this data will reshape the paradigms through which we understand human culture for years to come.
Author: Pamela J. Shoemaker
Publisher: SAGE Publications
ISBN: 1452210438
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 241
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Book Description
Click ′Additional Materials′ to read the foreword by Jerald Hage As straightforward as its title, How to Build Social Science Theories sidesteps the well-traveled road of theoretical examination by demonstrating how new theories originate and how they are elaborated. Essential reading for students of social science research, this book traces theories from their most rudimentary building blocks (terminology and definitions) through multivariable theoretical statements, models, the role of creativity in theory building, and how theories are used and evaluated. Authors Pamela J. Shoemaker, James William Tankard, Jr., and Dominic L. Lasorsa intend to improve research in many areas of the social sciences by making research more theory-based and theory-oriented. The book begins with a discussion of concepts and their theoretical and operational definitions. It then proceeds to theoretical statements, including hypotheses, assumptions, and propositions. Theoretical statements need theoretical linkages and operational linkages; this discussion begins with bivariate relationships, as well as three-variable, four-variable, and further multivariate relationships. The authors also devote chapters to the creative component of theory-building and how to evaluate theories. How to Build Social Science Theories is a sophisticated yet readable analysis presented by internationally known experts in social science methodology. It is designed primarily as a core text for graduate and advanced undergraduate courses in communication theory. It will also be a perfect addition to any course dealing with theory and research methodology across the social sciences. Additionally, professional researchers will find it an indispensable guide to the genesis, dissemination, and evaluation of social science theories.
Author: James Jaccard
Publisher: Guilford Publications
ISBN: 1462542441
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 545
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Book Description
"This book provides young scientists with tools to assist them in the practical aspects of theory construction. We take an informal journey through the cognitive heuristics, tricks of the trade, and ways of thinking that we have found to be useful in developing theories-essentially, conceptualizations-that can advance knowledge in the social sciences. This book is intended to provide the instructor with a useful source for helping students come up with ideas for research and for fine-tuning the resultant theories that emerge from such thinking. An objective of this book is to move toward a needed balance in the emphases given to theory construction and theory testing"--
Author: Gordon Hearn
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487589913
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 96
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Book Description
This is essentially a book about theory building. Instead of actually presenting theory, it suggests and illustrates a particular way in which the social work profession, or any of the other service professions, might pursue the task of developing theory to refine its mode of practice. While written for every professional, it is directed, in particular, to those most actively engaged in the development and refinement of theory for their profession. It is a personal document in the sense that it is a chronicle of the author's reflections about how a profession might pursue most profitably this aspect of its total function.
Author: Katie Lloyd Thomas
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350176249
Category : Architecture
Languages : en
Pages : 273
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Book Description
At a time of unprecedented levels of change in the production of building materials and their deployment in construction, better theoretical and historical tools are needed to understand these new developments and how they are altering the practices and concepts of architecture. Building Materials offers a radical rethink of how materials, as they are constituted in architectural practice, are themselves constructed and, in turn, uncovers a vast and neglected resource of architectural writing about materials as they are mobilized in architecture. The book is unique in conceiving architectural specification as a starting point for architectural theory, arguing that how materials are prescribed - through a range of practices from the literal processes of procurement and manufacture to epistemological, contractual, social and economic frameworks - radically alters their potential in architecture. Drawing on the work of French philosopher Gilbert Simondon, as well as close readings of everyday specifications from the 18th to 21st centuries, the book reveals that materials do not pre-exist their shaping or use in the world, but come into being through the processes that constitute them. The book addresses three distinct methods of specification each through the lens of a different material – 'naming' through timber, 'process-based' through concrete, and 'performance specification' through glass – in turn revealing how the process of architectural specification (or 'Preliminary Operations' as Simondon puts it) allows for the development of specific relationships between material and function.
