The Four Phases of Theory Integration by Dan Garvey and Anna Catherine Vorsteg

From the accounts furnished by students, and our observations, we have concluded there are four
phases as students attempt to move from theory to practice: Exhilaration, Rejection, Integration, and
Transformation.

1. Exhilaration- The students entered the internship experience excited about the potential power
of an educational approach they knew little about. During this phase it is natural for the
student intern to view "traditional" education with disdain. All that is not experiential may be
viewed as worthless and a threat to the experiential principles which must be embraced in the
schools.
2. Rejection- jection Armed with these "new" theories, it is predictable that student interns would
want to have leadership and teaching opportunities in which they could try these theories out.
Faced with this apparent crisis, the interns began to question the vigor with which they had
embraced experiential education. In the conversations with and between interns, and in their
writings, it became clear there was a crisis of confidence and a rejection of the belief that
experiential education was universally applicable in all situations.
3. Integration- Despite the initial exhilaration and rejection, the interns still had to reconcile the
fact that experiential techniques did work with many of the activities related in their program.
The need to allow students to be "incoherent" in their learning is emphasized. This re-
examination of theory based on the students' experiences, forms the crucial link in the ultimate
integration of the classroom activities with the leadership opportunities.
4. Transformation- If the students are successful during the integration stage in connecting a
classroom theory with experiences in the field, they are then ready to begin fashioning their
own theories. Students in the transformation stage are attempting to enter new experiences
with a set of beliefs and methods which they have transferred from prior experiences. Without
the ability to transform past theory and practice into a coherent new or amended theory, the
student would always be limited by their need for the theories of others to understand and act
on their world. During the transformation stage, the students attempted to make broader
statements in bridging their classroom learning in the program and the actual experience.

Contingency Theory in Auditing

The contingency theory of leadership and management states that there is no standard method by
which organizations can be led, controlled and managed. Organizations and their functions depend
on various external and internal factors. The functions of audits are, themselves, types of
organizations that are affected by various factors in the environment. The presence of such factors
is why auditing can be managed by applying the contingency theory, with a recognition that
processes and outcomes of audits are dependent on variable and contingent factors.