Summary. – Education is a goal-oriented field. But if we want to treat education scientifically
so we can accumulate, evaluate, and refine what we learn, then we must develop a theoretical
framework that is strongly rooted in objective observations and through which different
theoretical models of student thinking can be compared. Much that is known in the behavioral
sciences is robust and observationally based. In this paper, I draw from a variety of fields
ranging from neuroscience to sociolinguistics to propose an over-arching theoretical
framework that allows us to both make sense of what we see in the classroom and to compare
a variety of specific theoretical approaches. My synthesis is organized around an analysis of
the individual’s cognition and how it interacts with the environment. This leads to a two level
system, a knowledge-structure level where associational patterns dominate, and a controlstructure
level where one can describe expectations and epistemology. For each level, I sketch
some plausible starting models for student thinking and learning in physics and give examples
of how a theoretical orientation can affect instruction and research.