Hall, Budd L2025-04-102025-04-100000http://192.9.200.215:4000/handle/123456789/346This passage highlights a shift in development and education thinking—from top-down models to participatory, people-driven approaches. It critiques how traditional research often serves elite agendas or academic self-interest rather than community empowerment.Thinking about development, education and the role of social investigation has undergone dramatic shifts in the recent past. The "top do concepts of education and development have been widely questioned. Emphasis has shifted from concepts of development based on urbanized expectations to the need to stimulate growth and change in rural areas. The importance and necessity of increased popular involvement in decision making in both rural and urban settings is accepted widely. Development is more and more seen as an awakening process, a process of tapping the creative forces of a much larger proportion of society, a liberating of more persons efforts instead of a "problem" to be solved by the planners and academicians from afar. Along with the shift in thinking about development has come a general questioning in all fields of social science about the relationship between the way in which research is conducted and the overall values the researcher holds.enSocial investigationParticipatory developmentAcademic dependencyCommunity-centered developmentResearch and power dynamicsArticle