You have now identified one or more questions related to your own practice or interests that could be answered by a research study. That was the first step in the research process. The next step is to identify a theoretical framework. A framework is simply the structure of an idea or concept and how it is put together. Concepts are words or phrases that symbolize several interrelated ideas. Look again at the questions you generated for the "My Research Question" exercise. How many ideas or concepts are expressed? Concepts might include "teaching," "learning," "persistence," "attitude," "anxiety," "race," "gender," etc. So, a statement of your theoretical framework is an essay that interrelates relevant theories with the concepts involved in the research question.

How do you know which theories are relevant for the research question that interests you? If you have done any reading in the literature related to your problem or question, you may be familiar with the different ways the question has been approached by scholars in the field, some of whom will have proposed theories that help explain the phenomenon or concept you are interested in. Teaching theories, learning theories, communication theories, theories about race and gender, and many others have been proposed to explain different aspects of education.

A theoretical framework or perspective defines a particular point of view from which researchers focus their study. This framework identifies underlying assumptions from which particular kinds of questions are generated. For any particular educational phenomenon, there are many (often conflicting!) theories that might appropriately be applied to a research question. The choice of theoretical framework is based both on the worldview of the researcher and on previous work related to the problem.

Your Task:

Review the brief discussion of theoretical frameworks.

 Begin thinking about what might be an appropriate theoretical framework for your topic.