What theory is and what it’s good for are things that a lot of students seem to struggle with. When I was a master’s student, I found it intimidating when advanced doctoral students littered their speech with references to arcane theorists I was only beginning to read. I’m afraid I’ve become somewhat like those doctoral students in the sense that I’ve become more conversant with theory, but I wish I had read something like this chapter by Jonathan Culler (1997; via Torill Mortenson’s blog entry Theory? Huh?) towards the beginning of my graduate study. Although theory in this chapter foregrounds literary theory rather than learning theory, the summary towards the end (~pp.13-16) articulates the sort of tacit knowledge about theory that doesn’t make it into Wikipedia-type definitions, and well worth reading, IMHO 🙂
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