In November 2008, Dr. Marlene Asselin, Department of Language and Literacy Education, University of British Columbia, visited Ethiopia to learn about literacy initiatives in reading rooms and community libraries. While there, she met with Ministries and Faculties of Education to better understand curriculum, policies and challenges in improving Ethiopian children’s literacy. One of the challenges she learned of was barriers faced by Ethiopian colleagues in developing their research capacity and in expanding graduate and teacher education programs. Over the last several years, the government has greatly increased opportunities for higher education by expanding the few existing universities, and building many more. Enrolments have increased dramatically and there has not been enough time to train new faculty. Discussions revealed that such pressing demands on faculty along with the lack of research funding prevented development of scholarship.

To address this challenge, we intend to run parallel projects at UBC and each of the Ethiopian universities involving both faculty and Education students. We are particularly keen to achieve symmetry in the research activities in Ethiopia and Canada so that scholars and students in both countries are genuinely learning from each other. UBC will assist with the major priority in Ethiopian universities of building knowledge of research methodology and practical research experience. To achieve these ends we plan to use digital resources to design, manage and report studies with students in the various sites.