The research project on USAID educational development and cooperation

Hello, this is Takuya Akada, a graduate student in education and human resource development program, and became a M2 student from this April. Today, I’d like to report a part of our academic life in the education program, specifically, the joint seminar. This is one of our academic programs where we conduct group research throughout a semester supervised by Prof. Kitamura and Prof. Yamada. This past autumn seminar, luckily, we could invited the visiting scholar Prof. Williams from George Washington University to the seminar (Regarding him, please take a look at the previous post).

【The research project on USAID educational development and cooperation】
On the very first day of the seminar, we were announced that we were interviewing three USAID officials in the beginning of February (the seminar begins in mid September), and the announcement, needless to say, astonished us all so much. We divided into three research groups (3 people each), and with a great excitement and anxiety, we soon got down to researching about USAID and seeking foci on the research. No one was really familiar with USAID, so we all stumbled and strayed along the way. But, with the sincere help by three professors, especially Prof. Williams since he has working experience for USAID, we could deepen our understanding about the organization and somehow got ready ourselves for the interviews through trial and error.

【The interviews with USAID officers】
We conducted interviews with three officers scheduling three different days in February. Who we interviewed with were people working in Cambodia, Tanzania, and Washington D.C. each. So, we travelled to each country…. No!! We interviewed them through Skype. Everyone must have been anxious about communicating on the phone in English, since it requires higher command of English skill than talking in person (at least I think so and was actually anxious about it). On top of that, unluckily, despite the expensive web camera (Prof. Kitamura bough it the day before the first interview…), the monitor was not clear and even just dark most of the time due to the technical matters. But, contrary to our extreme nervousness, Prof. Williams initiated conversation in order for us to segue into interviews, the USAID officials were all gentle and deliberately answered our questions, and the other Professors also often lubricated our interview. We repeated that kind of communication three times…, finally, we somehow collected (got through interviews?) data, thanks to their support and interviewees. Now we are ready for paper!!

【Writing a paper】
Despite our enthusiasm toward paper, all of us are still working on the paper, though deadline has been past a long time before (we are so sorry about that!). Three papers are soon coming up here!! Please wait till getting them done. Period!!

Takuya Akada