Practice: A Functional Analysis of the Concept

Abstract

The relationship between theory and practice is discussed not only in psychology, but in many scholarly areas. In social sciences, for example, there has been a debate on the “problem of application”. This deals with the questions of how scientific theories can be implemented, for example, in educational, social, administrative or political programmes, how theories have to be constructed and formulated to allow such an implementation, how the realization of such programmes can be scientifically instructed and supported and, finally, how the results of such programmes can be judged or “evaluated”.