Theoretical research methods: brief description

Any scientific research suggests

creating a holistic structure related betweenviews, ideas and facts. The principal difference of scientific knowledge from the ordinary is the mandatory need for critical understanding of all the proposed ideas and evidence, as well as the desire for objectivity of views and strict methodology, both in verifying the facts and in the knowledge itself. There are empirical and theoretical research methods. In this article we will focus on the latter. However, before we turn to the mandatory characteristics of the scientific approach.

Popper criterion

This is the so-called criterion.falsifiability of theoretical research. The author of the concept is the most famous modern British thinker Karl Popper. His idea is that any scientific theory, to really be called scientific, must be subjected to practical experimental verification. For example, scientific and pedagogical research involves the study of psychological and pedagogical processes in the formation of personality and objective regularities in learning. And as a consequence, the deduction of effective educational methodologies. In this case, the criterion will be the reflection of real results in the application of methodologies derived from research.

Theoretical research methods

Any activity if it claims toscientific nature, should involve not only the criteria for testing ideas experimentally, but also an effective methodology for constructing theories and finding new facts. Since ancient times - since the times of ancient thinkers - empirical and theoretical methods of research have separated. The theoretical level in science is an objective reflection of the processes, phenomena, internal patterns and relationships that are achieved through the processing of practical data obtained through observations, experiments, and so on. Thus, theoretical research methods are a kind of superstructure over the empirical ones. The latter are represented by sensual forms expressed in information obtained directly by human senses and special devices. Piling up empirical facts is not a goal in itself, its ultimate goal is systematization, as well as the further construction of laws, theories and ideas about the world around it. Theoretical research methods are a logical abstraction that is created through the creation of scientific hypotheses and theories based on existing knowledge. Methods of theoretical research have a number of different options:

• Abstraction So called the process of distraction from certainproperties of the subject in his knowledge for the sake of in-depth study of a particular part of him. For example, abstraction results in concepts such as color, curvature, beauty, and so on.
• Formalization is the display of knowledge in a symbolic, symbolic form, when they acquire the form of formulas and conditional values.
• Analogy. It is a kind of conclusion about a certain similarity of two objects on some basis based on the identity between them in other characteristic features.
• Subject modeling is the study of an object using abstract models and the subsequent transfer of acquired knowledge to the original under study.
• Mental modeling - in methodologysimilarly to the objective, but here mental images are used. In addition to the noted, there is a computer simulation where programs are used, as well as a sign one - using formulas and drawings.
• Idealization is the creation of certain concepts.for objects that do not really exist, but have a prototype in it. For example, a ball, an ideal gas, a geometric point, a straight line, and so on.