EMPOWERING RESEARCH AS A VEHICLE OF TRANSFORMATIVE LEARNING

This paper examines transformative learning, the dialogical learning process a la Freire in particular, experienced by three graduate students and a teacher at a university in the Czech Republic while developing a research project on diversity management, concretely on motivational factors affecting the integration of immigrant women workers in the region of Mlada Boleslav. The paper concentrates especially on the phase of the student project creation, and its pilot phase. Qualitative methodology including in-depth individual as well as group interviews and researchers' journals entries were employed in order to address issues of power, empowerment, dialogue, research and transformative learning. All sources were fully transcribed and coded. The paper argues that disrupting traditional student roles by reorganizing learning spaces that center student voice, individual talents, skills, expertise, and agency create the necessary premise to successfully carry out an empowering research as defined by Cameron et al. (1992), meaning a research on, for, and with the immigrant women workers, while at the same time enhancing the process of transformative learning for everybody involved: teacher-students-and the subjects of research.