ABSTRACT
Competent theorizers make frequent use of theoretical models and theoretical displays to make sense of important aspects of “person interacting in the environment” configurations. A model is a small-scale representation of something concrete in the world. There are models of airplanes, railroad trains, cars, and buildings. A model can also be a representation of something more abstract such as the process of reconstructing a social network after a husband dies or a representation of the steps that social workers follow to find knowledge and translate it for use in practice. These theoretical models provide a picture or partial representation of a scientific theory. Shoemaker, Tankard, and Lasorsa (2004) define a theoretical model in this way: “A model simply represents a portion of reality, either an object or a process in such a way as to highlight what are considered to be key elements or parts of the object or process and the connections among them” (p. 110).
