Rowan's Dialectical Paradigm for Research

Rowan's Dialectical Paradigm for Research Definition: As mentioned in Ledwith's chapter 4, " In his attempt to synthesise old and new paradigm research, he analyses three concepts: alienation, social change and the research cycle. 'Alienation' refers to the treating of people as fragments, as a result of which they are not perceived as an essential part of a whole. In other words, studying the way people behave without relating it to the whole person, let alone their social and political context, and we need to understand the context in order to understand people" (p. 76). Application: This type of research is conducted with with the hope of trying to liberate the oppressed by developing research that is participant friendly. In other words, the person being research is as involved in the knowledge creation process as the researcher is; they learn from each other. Adaption: It would be useful to conduct more research on ethnic minorities within the United States in order to truly understand what it is that they experience. For example, certain ethnic minorities experience a disproportionate amount of educational inequality, more in-depth research should be developed in order to understand the cause of this and this new information will lead to the development of equitable solutions. It would also be beneficial if more ethnic minorities were the researchers.