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18.9: Who else has meta-theories?

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    Who else has meta-theories? Everyone has meta-theories about human nature and development: parents, teachers, nurses, social workers, doctors, business people, artists, politicians, and so on. For example,

    • doctors assume that weight loss is all about diet and exercise (nurture), so no one can do research on physiological differences in metabolism (nature).
    • teachers have assumptions about whether students come with motivation (nature) or have to be motivated from the outside (nurture), and organize their classrooms accordingly.
    • parents often argue about the nature of children’s development, whether it’s just the child’s personality (maturational), or the child is going through a normal stage (organismic), or if they are rewarding the wrong behavior (mechanistic).

    This page titled 18.9: Who else has meta-theories? is shared under a CC BY-NC license and was authored, remixed, and/or curated by Ellen A. Skinner, Thomas A. Kindermann, Robert W. Roeser, Cathleen L Smith, Andrew Mashburn & Joel Steele (Portland State University Library) .