• What are the theoretical foundations?
• How to carry out the theoretical foundation of a project or research?

We explain what the theoretical foundations of a project or research are, and its elements. In addition, instructions to carry them out.

The theoretical foundations serve as conceptual support for the work or final project.

What are the theoretical foundations?

The theoretical foundations (or the theoretical framework) of a Project or of a research It is the set formed by the documentation and previous reflection regarding the subject to be research that researchers have compiled and analyzed, and that serves as conceptual support for their work or final project.

This means that researchers draw from various theoretical sources their specific way of approaching and conceptually analyzing the research topic, turning to those who have previously studied it in depth. It is essential that those who carry out research can distinguish their own ideas from those they have inherited from the specialized literature.

The theoretical foundations of an investigation allow us to understand the problem in depth, based on current perspectives on the subject.

Thus, for example, if someone intends to study a Chinese work of art, the logical thing is to go to what the great specialists in the field have said: historians, art critics, sinologists and other specialists who can offer points of view, key arguments and useful tools to understand and interpret Chinese artwork. Otherwise, there is a risk of repeating what others have said before or of remaining in the most superficial layers of available knowledge.

The theoretical foundations of all research are formed by:

• The background investigative, that is, the research work, inside and outside the academy, that has been previously done on the subject.
• The theoretical and conceptual bases, that is to say, the works of reflection, interpretation and theorization around the subject that constitute the specialized literature. This may include a glossary specialized, that is, a set of key definitions, as well as a series of theoretical or conceptual proposals.
• The legal bases, that is, the set of legal and moral provisions and considerations that, if any, are relevant to the project or research.

All this must be taken into account when writing the theoretical framework of the research, in order to provide the reader or evaluator with a clear and complete picture of what the researcher's point of view is and how much has been documented, this that is, how deeply you understand the problem you are about to investigate.

How to carry out the theoretical foundation of a project or research?

In order to carry out a correct theoretical foundation for a project or research, it is important to understand that much has already been said about any possible topic, so research does not mean starting from scratch in the study of a topic, but starting from the knowledge accumulated that allows us to see beyond. Therefore, the more we document ourselves and the better we understand our ideas, the better we will be when it comes to explaining them to a third party.

To write the theoretical framework, the following steps or stages should be taken into account:

• Step 1: Document yourself. The first step towards theoretical foundation is to read. We must do a bibliographic archaeo or search of sources regarding the subject in academic and specialized databases (also in other open sources, such as Google, but the risk of coming across a lot of low-quality information is high). Our task will be to gather as many information of quality and know what our most valuable background is. We may, for example, look for prior research and go to your bibliography, to see that texts and theoretical authors consulted, and thus add them to ours if appropriate.
• Step 2: Hierarchize. Once we have a theoretical overview on the subject, we must establish certain hierarchies regarding the quality and usefulness of the information. Everything serves to be documented, but not to the same extent: it is always better to go to the original sources and the fundamental texts of a discipline, in order to understand what other researchers, in turn, contributed. So in this step we will select which texts will be central to our work and which will only provide complementary information. At this stage it will be useful to make mental maps either conceptual, to locate all the information and their respective authors.
• Step 3: Extract. The third step is to take note of the most important passages from our central sources, either in a notebook or on index cards that allow us to organize the information. We must take reliable textual citations, also paying attention to the page, title, author and other details of the text that we will need for the bibliography and to be able to cite them correctly when necessary. Once we have the documented information, we can begin to organize it according to a conceptual scheme, that is, determining which concept we should use first and which ones later, to embark on a theoretical path towards the starting point of our research.
• Step 4: Recompose. The drafting of the theoretical framework will be the fourth step and will consist of explaining to the reader, in an organized, clear and concise manner, the theoretical path that we have traced at the end of the previous step.In other words, we must guide you through the previous studies of the topic and the main contributions of the previous investigations, so that you understand which authors we consult and why, what concepts we will borrow from them and why, and ultimately which one. will be our theoretical starting point and why. In addition, if it is pertinent, the legal aspects of the project must also appear in this section.
• Step 5: Clarify. In case it is necessary, a fifth step will serve to elaborate a glossary of specialized terms, so that the reader handles the theoretical language that interests us. The reader will be able to return to the glossary if they have doubts later, or they will be able to start reading the project understanding exactly what we mean by certain terms, especially if they are polysemous, complicated or even debatable terms.

Finally, it should not be forgotten that all the theoretical texts consulted must be available to the reader in the bibliography. All of them are part, even those that we decided not to use or those that we decided to contradict, of our research and our theoretical knowledge on the subject.