Investigating the Coping Skills of Newly Qualified teachers in Eritrean Primary Schools

March 2000 - April 2004

(Contact: Dr John Holmes or Abraham Belay - Asmara Teacher Education Institute or Dr Goodith White)

Funded By: DfID

Other project members:
Dr Martin Lamb
Dr. Penelope Robinson
Stuart Tomlinson - Cookridge Primary School

The project began in 2000 as a Higher Education Link between the Leeds School of Education and the Asmara Teacher Education Institute (ATEI). During the past four years two groups of Eritrea tutors have visited Leeds and Leeds staff have visited Eritrea.

The link has focussed on curriculum renewal at ATEI based upon research into the coping strategies of newly qualified graduates from the Institute. Over four years about 20 teachers have been followed up at four primary schools in the Anseba region of Eritrea, around the northern town of Keren. Teams from Leeds and ATEI have visited the schools, observed and videoed classes and interviewed teachers.

Although there have been problems as some teachers were transferred to other regions, it has been possible to track the development of a number of teachers over this period. As they are in relatively remote remote rural settings with colleagues who are similarly young and inexperienced it has been an invaluable opportunity to see how teachers use their own resources to develop as members of the profession. It has also enabled us to see what elemnts of the ATEI course were most useful in helping in this process.

At present the team is engaged in writing up the results of this research. A new project is being set up which will build on the work already achieved and focus on in-service training facilities for primary teachers.

Holmes and White (2003) have already published a paper on the language learning contexts observed in one of the regions investigated. (Holmes, J.L. and White, A.G. (2003) 'The Language Contetx in EFL Methodology: The Effect of Small Languages' International Journal of Learning 10 pp 3175-3186.

John Holmes
School of Education
Hillary Place
University of Leeds
Leeds LS 2 9JT

This project last updated by John Holmes on 6th September 2006.