ABSTRACT
This chapter explores what it means to do empirical research in an unjust world. After brief overviews of praxis-oriented, new paradigm research and of recent efforts in radical educational theorizing aimed at creating an empirically informed Marxism. The chapter focuses on the development of empowering approaches to generating knowledge. In an attempt to reveal the implications that the quest for empowerment holds for research design. The chapter focuses on few interwoven issues: the need for reciprocity, the stance of dialectical theory-building versus theoretical imposition, and the question of validity in praxis-oriented research. It addresses reciprocity between researchers and researched. The chapter turns now to those who build varying degrees of reciprocity into their research designs for the purpose of empowering the researched. It describes that the goal of emancipatory research is to encourage self-reflection and deeper understanding on the part of the persons being researched at least as much as it is to generate empirically grounded theoretical knowledge.
