IU awarded $3.5 million grant to teach English education in Afghanistan

This month, U.S. troops began withdrawing from Afghanistan. Thirty thousand troops are expected to return home by next summer.

Now, as the country begins the process of standing on its own legs, the U.S. State Department has awarded an IU center nearly $3.5 million to help teach English education there.

The $3,487,454 grant will fund a three-year project organized by IU’s Center for Social Studies and International Education.

The U.S. Embassy in Kabul and the American University of Afghanistan will serve as partners for the project, which will be directed by two IU School of Education faculty members.

Its goal is to develop and implement a master’s degree in English language education at Kabul Education University in Afghanistan.

The faculty members, Terry Mason and Mitzi Lewison, have worked with Afghan higher education for a number of years, establishing an education master’s degree at Kabul — the first master’s degree ever offered there — and bringing Afghan educators to study at IU.

From 2007 to 2009, 12 teachers from Afghanistan have come to Bloomington to earn master’s degrees at the School of Education.

“Afghan educators have come here, earned degrees and returned to Afghanistan. We’ve had an ongoing connection to the administration of the universities there and the Ministry of Higher Education,” Mason said in a press release. “So we’re looked upon as a leading institution in Afghanistan in English language education.

“This project enables us to build on our previous work because our partners there are familiar with the kind of teaching that we emphasize at IU.”

That track record led to IU’s continued involvement with the country and the new project.

“Its intent is to train qualified English faculty members for the numerous institutions of higher education around the country,” Mason said. “It’s seen as an important program for not just providing access to the language itself, but also for affecting the way teaching is carried out.”

As Afghanistan begins to redevelop its education system, improving the country’s English skills by providing access to more English teachers is important, he said.

English is an important language for international diplomacy and world commerce.
Work has already begun on designing the curriculum, and Mason said the staff for the project will be made up of IU faculty and other teachers in language education.

“There are very concrete things that people do with the language that can help the country economically, socially and politically,”
Mason said.

— Jake New