Macquarie University

Research Paradigms - FOAR701

This unit provides a broad overview of the research paradigms that characterize the Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences. Through this unit, the Faculty of Arts seeks to provide students with a constructive framework to recognise the possible contribution of diverse theoretical and disciplinary approaches. By concentrating on a core problem that crosses disciplinary boundaries, demonstrating how that problem might be confronted under different paradigms, students will become conversant in a range of analytical techniques and theoretical perspectives. Students will learn to better recognise the assumptions that underwrite diverse approaches, their strengths, and their relations to each other, especially to facilitate collaboration and the exchange of ideas.

The unit is taught by a dedicated core of Arts staff, including guest lecturers from a range of Departments. By the end of the unit, students will have a strong grasp of the intellectual terrain across Arts disciplines, having become familiar with some of the core paradigms that have persisted in our fields, including through multiple variants over time.