Research Initiatives

Context Matters Research Grants

Research on literacy in general and reading in particular has been largely carried out in high-income countries and contexts, and then generalized to low-income countries and contexts. The Context Matters Research Grants initiative was established by CODE to help address this problematic knowledge flow from North to South and to support African Researchers as they take the lead in evidence-based literacy research. Our intent is to stimulate conversation, develop a research agenda, and support research which is clearly situated in local contexts and recognizes the multifaceted and complex relationships between the local and global in education. This means placing a high priority not only on the location of research but also on the need to engage local researchers.

CODE annually awards up to five research grants of CAD $10,000 each to increase the effectiveness, efficiency and salience of K-12 education programming in Africa.

To begin the conversation, CODE commissioned two landscape literature reviews and one policy analysis from Canadian Faculties of Education (University of British Columbia and McGill University). These papers were presented at the CODE Research Symposium that took place as part of the Pan-African Literacy for All Conference in Abuja, Nigeria (August 28-30, 2017). These papers, including Executive Summaries can be found here.

The 2020 grant applications have been received and are currently under review by the Context Matters jury. We expect to share the results in November 2020.