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Theories And Concepts Of Social Work

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Theories and Concepts in Social Work Hawra Alakhdhair Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis My view of theory and concepts As humans develop, social scientists utilize theories and concepts to define and explain behaviors. Each tenet of theories and concepts defines these frameworks difference. I will begin to define theories and concepts using the scientific and social field lenses. Scientific and social theory The definition of theory and concept in the scientific field is different than in society. According to John Wacker “Authors usually agree that the goal of ‘good’ theory is a clear explanation of how and why specific relationships lead to specific events” (Wacker, 1998, p. 364). Scientists use theories to explain scientific experiments (Bradford, 2015). That is, theory is an explanation of a relationship or an experiment process. Daniel little states a theory as “One or more hypotheses about causal mechanisms and processes” (little, 2010). We usually say that we have a theory if we got an idea. Scientific and social concepts James Watt and Sjef Berg state, “The basic building blocks of theories are concepts” (Watt and Berg, 2002, p. 11). Concept is a category that we gather in things that are related (Botsch, 2008) Watt and Berg need concepts to define the theory, but Bostsch in the social field is defining concepts as a groups of common facts or ideas. We can see the differences in views here, where each one is defining based in his

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