AISW Vol. 5, No. 2


The Internationalization of Doctoral SocialWork Education:
Learning from a Partnership in Ethiopia

Alice K. Johnson Butterfield

Abstract: What does it mean to internationalize doctoral education by working
abroad? What does it mean to internationalize doctoral education in one’s home
country? This article offers a perspective based on the Social Work Education in
Ethiopia Partnership, which established Ethiopia’s first-ever master’s degree in
social work in 2004. To ensure sustainability of the MSW program, a doctoral pro-
gram in Social Work and Social Development was launched in 2006. This article
describes the development and research base of the doctoral program. Beginning in
the first semester, teams of doctoral students join with poor communities in action
research. Overall, these efforts lead to an emerging model of university-based devel-
opment. Through engaged action research, faculty and students use human capital
resources and the educational process to function as “development actors.” Some
ideas for internationalizing doctoral education are offered. Deans and directors in
the United States and Canada are challenged to expand doctoral education within
a developing country and to prepare doctoral students to include international per-
spectives in their teaching and research.

Keywords: Doctoral education, international, community development, higher
education partnerships, action research

INTRODUCTION

International social work is a two-way street. This phrase illustrates that there is
much that social workers in the developed world can learn from social work in
developing countries (Midgley, 1990).This idea guidesmywork internationally and
represents what I believe should be the ultimate goal of international social work.
But, howdowe andothers cross the intersections of theworld andbring each other
to our side of theworld inways that promotemutual learning and development? In
translating thesewords to the themeof internationalizing doctoral socialwork edu-
cation, two questions emerge.What does it mean to internationalize doctoral edu-
cation by working abroad?What does it mean to internationalize doctoral educa-
tion at our home universities?

Alice K. Johnson Butterfield is professor, Jane Addams College of Social Work, University of Illinois at
Chicago, Chicago, IL 60411.

Copyright© 2007 Advances in SocialWorkVol. 8 No. 2 (Fall 2007) 237-251.
Indiana University School of SocialWork.

237



In the history of international social work, there are critiques ofWestern models
that have been imposed on curriculum in developing nations, such as Africa, and
earlier in India and elsewhere (Healy, Asamoah, &Hokenstad, 2003). I would like to
posit, however, that we are in a new global environment defined by the information
age—a concept articulated by Thomas Friedman (2006) as “the world is flat.” In a
world with fewer trade and political barriers, billions of people are instantly “con-
nected” to one another through the Internet and advances in digital communica-
tion. In this environment of horizontal relationships, global collaboration takes on
new meaning: International social work education partnerships can be ways of
sharing methods, skills, models, and innovative practices without imposing them
on developing countries in a fashion reminiscent of colonialism.

To provide an example of what itmeans to internationalize doctoral education by
working abroad, I will share experiences and involvement at both the master’s and
doctoral levels in Ethiopia. What I have learned about the internationalization of
doctoral education has been learned through this practice. My thoughts are based
particularly on my work and that of my colleagues at the Jane Addams College of
SocialWork at theUniversity of Illinois atChicagoand theGraduate School of Social
Work at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia through our university-to-university
partnership. Based on a formal agreement committing our two universities to joint
efforts in teaching, service, and research, we envisioned that our partnership could
become a “development actor.” Holding fast to the idea that international social
work is a two-way street, we imagined that the major efforts of our development,
which occurred through our partnership, would occur in Ethiopia. Over time, its
deliverable products—new degree granting programs, a professional workforce,
and applied research—together would build the overall capacity of the host coun-
try to deal more adequately with its social and health problems.

SOCIALWORK EDUCATION IN ETHIOPIA PARTNERSHIP
(PROJECT SWEEP)

The story starts with an e-mail message inviting me to travel to Ethiopia with a
group of medical faculty. InMay 2001, I went to Ethiopia as amember of a delega-
tion led by former Ambassador to Ethiopia David H. Shinn. The purpose of our
visit was to identify specific needs and opportunities for collaboration with uni-
versity and government officials and leaders of local non-governmental organiza-
tions (NGOs) working in community health and social service delivery (Shinn,
2001). I was particularly interested in the role of social work in Ethiopia.What was
the need for social work? Did the profession exist? I found that the previous mili-
tary regime had ended social work education. Prior to 1976, there was a vibrant
school of social work offering a bachelor’s degree. Some 30 years later, only a rem-
nant of social work education remained. Two former deans, Dr. Seyoum Gebre
Selassie and Dr. Andargatchew Tesfaye, both whom received their Ph.D. in social
work and sociology from the University of Michigan in the early 1970s, had “hid-
den” six courses in macro social work within the undergraduate curriculum at
Addis AbabaUniversity (AAU). In the practice field, less than 50 social workerswith
bachelor’s degrees remained where they had practiced social work in Ethiopia for
approximately the last 30. Althoughmost were ending their careers through retire-

ADVANCES IN SOCIALWORK238



ment and several were recently deceased, these social workers were leaders in
NGOs and had mentored many graduates of sociology in the ways of social work.
Also, Drs. Seyoum and Andargatchew, and a few younger colleagues in the
Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, had successfully placed the
development of amaster’s degree in social work in theUniversity’s five-year strate-
gic plan.While a goal, therewas little or no capacity to actually develop such a pro-
gram.

Together, we wrote a proposal for seed funds to Higher Education for
Development (HED), the intermediary organization established in 1992 as the
Association LiaisonOffice forUniversity Cooperation inDevelopment (ALO). HED
assists the nation’s six major higher education associations in partnering with the
U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). HED has funded more than
250 university-to-university partnerships over the past five years, from education,
law, agriculture, and other disciplines, but wewere the first social work program to
receive funding. The Jane Addams College received $99,000 to partner with Addis
Ababa University to establish Ethiopia’s first-ever master’s degree in social work.
Through the Social Work Education in Ethiopia Partnership (Project SWEEP), we
completed an assessment of needs and planning, curriculum development and
faculty exchange, andprogramdevelopment, including syllabi and teachingmate-
rials [http://www.aboutsweep.org]. A five-year Memorandum of Agreement was
signed by the two universities to collaborate in teaching, research, and service.

In developing the newmaster’s degree curriculum, we aligned it with the “Global
Standards for SocialWork Education and Training” (IASSW, 2004). The curriculum
addresses Ethiopia’s current and emerging health and social needs by emphasiz-
ing engaged research and community-based services that focus on poverty reduc-
tion. The new graduate degree prepares professional social workers to manage
community-based services and develop newprograms in the areas of health, child
welfare, and community development. Specific courses focus on community
practice, socialmobilization, food security, andmigration; poverty and gender dis-
crimination; counselling for people infected with HIV/AIDS; and extended family
support for orphaned and abandoned children. Project SWEEP lays the ground-
work for developing Ethiopia’s educational capacity for preparing a professional
social work workforce. We also imagined that the establishment of the very first
MSWprogram in Ethiopia would be a significant step toward the accomplishment
of the Ethiopian government’s long-range goal for reducing poverty. The Faculty
Senate at AAU approved the curriculum and the new degree in 2004.

The UIC-AAU partnership has been extraordinarily successful (c.f., Johnson
Butterfield & Linsk, 2005). An indicator of this success is that AAU decided mid-
project to begin the graduate program as a new graduate school of social work,
rather than as a master’s degree in the Department of Sociology and Social
Anthropology. In July 2006, the “first batch” (as they call themselves) of 39 students
defended their thesis research projects and graduated with an MSW degree. The
“second batch” of 39 students graduated in September 2007, and a new class of 32
students, one-third of whom are women, were enrolled. Applications have nearly
doubled each year, from 60 applications to 109 applications to 210 applications in
2006 (third class of students). At the graduation celebration,which students organ-

239Johnson Butterfield/THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF DOCTORAL EDUCATION



ADVANCES IN SOCIALWORK240

ized at the Hilton Hotel in Addis Ababa, remarks by the Minister of Capacity
Building and Andreas Eshete’, AAU’s President and UNESCO Chair for Human
Rights and Democracy heralded the new program as a major educational devel-
opment and the most successful international partnership on the campus.

Our experience of success is also due to another phenomenon at work in some
countries in Africa, such as Tanzania, Ethiopia, and Southern Sudan. In Ethiopia,
for example, the government is expanding technical institutes to academic degree
granting institutions and building 13 new public universities from the ground up.
This includes expanding capacity at eight institutions, each projected to grow by
8,000-10,000 students, plus the development of new universities, for a total of 21
institutions of higher education. This expansion also includes administrative
improvements and quality education. To update pedagogical techniques, the uni-
versity encourages faculty to move away from a strict lecture format to applied
research, class exercises, group projects, internships, and other interactive meth-
ods. Project SWEEP is valued for fostering several innovations, including a skills-
based curriculum, block teaching for course scheduling, a transparent admissions
process, intensive student orientation, an adult-learning approach, and new ped-
agogical methods, such as group projects and field placements. Our block-teach-
ing method was born out of necessity and from our understanding of adult learn-
ing models. Since there were only two Ethiopian faculty (the dean and associate
deanwith other administrative responsibilities), faculty and colleagues fromother
universities throughout the world went to Ethiopia to teach for one-month peri-
ods, including classes scheduled during their summer vacations or mid-semester
breaks. In the first year, for example, four one-month courses were taught each
semester.

Another reason for the success of our partnership was the infusion of leadership
from the AAU side of the partnership, with the appointment of AbyeTasse as Dean
and Dr. Melese Getu as Associate Dean. Their leadership was essential in obtain-
ing university approval, securing computers, classroom space, and administrative
staff. Until the appointment ofDeanAbye, our project functionedmore as a“grass-
roots” initiative within the larger university. With leadership from President
Andreas, and with Dean Abye also holding a key administrative position as
Associate Vice President for International Affairs, Project SWEEP quickly turned
into a recognized innovation and center of excellence within Addis Ababa
University. This is a good example of how partnerships working at the “grassroots
level” can become solidly a part of larger systems when leadership at the top joins
grassroots initiatives.

BUILDING CAPACITY AND SUSTAINABILITY

The success of our partnership must also be assessed by its ability to accomplish
two goals: 1) build capacity for dealingwith social problems in Ethiopia and 2) sus-
tain social work education at the university level over the long-term. To provide
some context to these issues, this section provides a brief overview of the social,
health, and economic context of Ethiopia. Restarting social work education was
seen as part of the answer to social problems in the country. It was in the following
context that we planned the MSW curriculum to build the capacity of social work



241Johnson Butterfield/THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF DOCTORAL EDUCATION

in Ethiopia and work to develop the doctoral program to sustain social work edu-
cation at the university.

The Social, Health, and Economic Context of Ethiopia

Ethiopia facesmany problems. The situation in Ethiopia is not unlike that inmany
African countries. Ethiopia is an extremely poor country of 71 million people.
Eighty-one percent of its population lives on less than $2 USD per day. As first
exposed in 1984 by cameraman Mohamed Amin, recurrent drought and famine
continue to plague the country (Smith, 1998). Since the appearance of HIV/AIDS,
life expectancy has fallen from 45 years in 1990 to 42 years in 2001. Approximately
three million people have HIV/AIDS, the third largest number of any country in
the world. An estimated 1.2 million Ethiopian children have been orphaned.
“Orphans in Africa suffer recurrent psychological trauma, starting with the illness
and death of their parents, followed by cycles of poverty, malnutrition, stigma,
exploitation, and often, sexual abuse. Experiencing this, orphans are at risk of
developing antisocial behavior patterns that can endanger community and
national development” (Matshalaga & Powell, 2002, p. 185-186). Impoverished
grandparents care for many of these orphans, but as their numbers of grandpar-
ents decline, child-headed households are becomingmore common. Child-head-
ed households are a great risk, because of their limited economic capacity, gender
inequality, prostitution, and drug and alcohol abuse.

In part, these problems result frommore than 30 years of war with Eritrea, which
consumed the country’s resources. Similar to countries in Eastern and Central
Europe ruled by Communist or totalitarian regimes, Ethiopia was ruled by a mili-
tary regime prior to the 1990s. About the same time that the Berlin Wall fell and
revolutions occurred in former Communist-bloc countries, Ethiopia changed to a
democratic government in 1991. The country ismaking progress towards amarket
economy through its Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Program
(SDPRP), which gives regional states the responsibility to plan and implement the
delivery of health and other human services. In terms of human development,
Ethiopia’s reform and decentralization program has made progress:

• Gross school enrollment increased from 33% in 1990 to 64% in 2000 to 93%
in 2005.

• GDP per capita grew from an average 5.4% in 2000 to 8.7% in 2005.

• Infant mortality decreased from 128 per 1,000 live births in 1990 to 92 per
1,000 live births in 2000 to 80 per 1,000 live births in 2005 (World Bank,
2007).

These improvements indicate a good context for development, even though
improvement has not been uniform and disparities have widened in different
regions of Ethiopia betweenurban and rural areas and among various groups of the
population. The high-risk groups who are less able to take advantage of democrati-
zation and economic growth are the large numbers of people living in poverty,
including women and children, the elderly, the disabled, and the handicapped.

From the perspective of higher education, Ethiopia has lacked the professional
infrastructure to address the problems discussed above. Thus, for many years,



attempts to build a professional workforce meant sending people overseas for
advanced degrees and training. Sending students to graduate programs in other
countries does not build the capacity of local universities. This approach has
proved at times to be disastrous, because of the high cost of education at overseas
sites and the “brain drain” or “brain bleed,” as some have called it. Doctoral stu-
dents who study abroad too often remain there, and the resultant expatriate loss
further reduces the opportunity for the country to build its own cadre of doctoral-
trained faculty. The statistics are staggering. A survey at Addis Ababa University
shows that 400 of 600 graduates who went for further study in the United States
and Europe did not return to Ethiopia. Two out of 10 doctors from Addis Ababa
University’s medical faculty returned. Only 20% of the graduates of sociology and
social administration whowent for further study returned, andmost were anthro-
pologists who have a rich context for their work in Ethiopia. Although the
Department sent several graduates abroad to obtain advanced degrees in social
work in the late 1990s, none returned to provide leadership for developing the
master’s degree, as outlined in the University’s strategic plan (Getu, 2005).

The Ph.D. Program

From the beginning of Project SWEEP, sustainability was an underlying concern of
our planning team. “Sustainability is built on the capacity of the faculty.” Those
words by Professor Seyoumare etched inmymind and, from that point, our team’s
unspoken and ultimate goal was the development of a doctoral program in
Ethiopia. This became our vision. Therefore, once themaster’s programwas oper-
ational, attention returned to developing a doctoral program to prepare Ethiopian
faculty for positions at Addis Ababa University and other universities in Ethiopia
that may develop social work programs. With David Moxley, formerly of Wayne
State University and now on the faculty of the University of Oklahoma, Abye Tasse
and I collaborated on a grant proposal that was to be presented to the Ministry of
Education for funds to start the Ph.D. program.

Eight students from the MSW class of 2006 were admitted to the doctoral pro-
gram and hired as staff. Their roles included partial responsibilities for field edu-
cation, scheduling and logistics for international visitors, student advising, assist-
ing in strategic planning, administration of the Graduate School of Social Work,
and so on.Thus, in the short-term, the doctoral program increased the capacity for
Ethiopians in residence by about 200%. Addis Ababa University has also provided
transportation funds and a small per diem for visiting international faculty, as well
as funding for action research.

A challenge faced by the international team who developed the doctoral cur-
riculumwas combining their various views about what doctoral education should
entail. The two Ethiopian members of our team had received doctorates from
France and England; another professor obtained her doctorate in India; I had
obtainedmine in the United States. The British experience leaned toward individ-
ual work with a faculty chairperson and extensive individualized readings; the
French experience included lively “discussion and debate” seminars with the great
minds of the university; the program in India focused on applied research. My
experience atWashington University in St. Louis involved interdisciplinary cours-
es and research practicum. As we sought to create a plan for doctoral education in

242 ADVANCES IN SOCIALWORK



Ethiopia, each of us brought our biases to the table.We each hoped to incorporate
some of what we felt were the strengths of our doctoral programs; each of us want-
ed to address some ofwhatwe felt were our program’s shortcomings.We also knew
that the new doctoral program had to address the difficult problems of Ethiopia
and the urgent need for faculty. Moreover, from our various perspectives, we
sought a way to streamline the doctoral educational process without compromis-
ing quality. Our work together became synergistic. We created a curriculum plan
for the Ph.D. program in Social Work and Social Development at Addis Ababa
University, which includes innovative elements borrowed from our international
experiences but which is also shaped by the particular context and educational
realities in Ethiopia.

Table 1 shows the year-round curriculum,which includes amenu of eight cours-
es, nine seminars, and eight planning/research units. Courses (for credit) are com-
pleted in the first four semesters of study. Seminars (pass/fail), held by the resident
or visiting faculty, include four doctoral pro-seminars that critically examine sub-
stantive topics, such as poverty, gender, community heath, homelessness, migra-
tion, urban and rural development, child welfare, criminal justice, and so on,
through multi-disciplinary and interdisciplinary frameworks. Seminars engage
faculty and students in dialogue and debate to critically analyze the topic of dis-
cussion, examine the theory and research base, and identify best practice models
and policies for addressing it. A comprehensive portfolio is the anchor uponwhich
the Qualifying Assessment is completed at the end of the fourth semester.
Students who pass can move forward in doctoral study. Since coursework will be
completed by the end of the first calendar year, students will be able to teach dur-
ing the second calendar year of their studies.

The dissertation consists of three original empirical papers of publishable quali-
ty for submission to relevant journals. These articles are based on team-led action
researchprojects but reflect a carve-out areaof independent research carriedout by
each student. The three papers comprise an integrated series of scholarly publica-
tions that focus on a social issue of local, regional, or national importance.The final
product, which documents the student’s scholarly expertise, includes three addi-
tional sections: an introduction to the substantive area of the research, implications
for socialwork and social development, and a summary and conclusions.ThePh.D.
program is a year-round course of study; thus, students will complete their disser-
tation projects and graduate in three years (c.f., Tasse & Getu, 2006).

The planning/researchmodules became the solution to another problem thatwe
faced in developing the doctoral curriculum. How could we reduce delays in com-
pleting doctoral degrees and associated research projects? Without question, we
wanted to avoid “credentializing” doctoral students, but at the same time, neither
the urgent needs of the country nor the scarce resources of the university could
afford extended financial and human resource investment in a few select students.
We also wanted to do something different than the traditional process of doctoral
education in the United States, where the typical trajectory towards a doctoral
degree requires students to: 1) complete coursework; 2) pass a qualifying exam; 3)
write anddefend aproposal; 4) carry out research and analyze data; 5)write the dis-
sertation; and 6) successfully defend it. I do not know the average length of time it

243Johnson Butterfield/THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF DOCTORAL EDUCATION



ADVANCES IN SOCIALWORK244

takes for the complete process to occur, but my experience is that four years is a
“quick study,” and the average time may be more like five or six years. Thus, to
reduce delays in completing research, we decided to start team-based action
research projects through the planning/research components of the curriculum.
These team-based action research mini-projects begin immediately in the first
semester, alongside the doctoral coursework and seminars.

Year 1: Year 1: Fall Year 1: Spring Year 2: Summer
Summer Semester Semester

Models and Doctoral Pro- Doctoral Pro- Evaluation for
Theories of Seminar I (S) Seminar II (S) Field Research
Social Change (S)
(C) 2 credits

Action Research Quantitative Ethics in Field Teaching &
& Philosophy of Data Analysis Research (S) Pedagogy in
Science (C) (C) 4 credits SocialWork (C)
2 credits 4 credits

Action Action Research Advanced Meta-Evaluation
Research Mini-Project II Assessment and
Mini-Project I (P/R) for Action Dissemination
(P/R) Research (C) (C) 4 credits

4 credits

Advanced Data Portfolio
Collection & Development
Analysis (C) I (P/R)
4 credits

Planning Major
Action Research
Project (P/R)

4 Credits 8 Credits 8 Credits 8 Credits

Year 2: Fall Year 2: Spring Year 3: Summer Year 3: Fall
Semester Semester Semester

Dissertation Doctoral Pro- Action Research Dissemination
(8 credits) Seminar IV (S) Supervision II Workshop &

(P/R) Portfolio
Preparation (S)

Doctoral Pro- Action Research Action Research
Seminar III (S) Supervision I Supervision III

(P/R) (P/R)

Academic Portfolio
Writing and Development
Dissemination II (P/R)
(S)

Design and
Proposal
Writing (S)

8 Credits

Table 1: Ph.D. Sequence of Courses—School of SocialWork, Addis Ababa University



Johnson Butterfield/THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF DOCTORAL EDUCATION 245

Action Research and Community Engagement

Action learning is a form of engagement that focuses on the utilization of existing
knowledge and best practices to design and implement research projects that
achieve important development outcomes and, at the same time, contribute to
scholarly knowledge. Action learning is a central idea of the doctoral program: 1)
Ethiopia is addressing serious social issues that require effective and high impact
action to ameliorate these issues; 2) the university is amajor resource to the coun-
try and, through its civic engagement, can create long-term action projects sus-
tainable across generations of doctoral students to achieve beneficial community
outcomes, while contributing to a global knowledge base; and 3) action projects
will generate dissertation research that can potentially have an impact on the
country’s national poverty reduction, healthcare, and development agendas. As a
core aspect of the doctoral program, action research imbues it with relevance,
practicality, innovation, and a linkage between social theory and social work prac-
tice. We believe that this action research focus also makes this doctoral program
distinctive within the range of programs existing internationally. An AAU doctoral
degree in social work and social development is perhaps one of a kind, given this
action research frame of reference and ethos of community/civic engagement.

The planning/research requirement of the doctoral program contributes to an
emerging model of a university-community partnership for development (c.f.,
Soska & Johnson Butterfield, 2005). Table 2 shows the process of our engagement
with the Gedam Sefer community, an urban slum area in Addis Ababa. Our
engagement startedwith a Community Assessment as part of a course assignment
in the MSW program, followed by a small research study that assessed the skills
and capacities of 100 poor women living in the community. For their field
practicum, three students were placed in local government offices. Later, two
MSW students carried out thesis research in the same community.When the doc-
toral program began, four students selected the Gedam Sefer community for
ongoing engagement based on the Asset Based Community Development strate-
gy (Kretzmann & McKnight, 1993). The involvement of the doctoral students
through action research in Gedam Sefer has led to increased formalization of the
emerging university-community partnership through Action Research Mini-
Projects I and II and other Planning/Research segments of the curriculum.
Currently, doctoral students are playing a leadership role in developing a large-
scale proposal and action plan for asset-based development with residents of the
Gedam Sefer community.

The Gedam Sefer example illustrates how engaged research on the part of stu-
dents and faculty in institutions of higher education, in partnership with local
communities and organizations, can work collaboratively toward community
change and build social interventions. We expect that the model of community
engagement we are developing will lead to sustainable outcomes for improving
the standard of living and quality of life of poor households in Ethiopia. Ourmodel
is also onemeans of responding to poverty by extending the teaching, service, and
research capacity of a university in the United States and a university in Ethiopia
to international development. As such, our partnership envelops the idea that
partnerships aremore than an exchange; they should exhibit a two-way transfer of



ADVANCES IN SOCIALWORK246

knowledge, methods, and practice skills. There is the opportunity to teach and
learn frommultiple partners. There is the opportunity to incorporate service into
practice. And, there is the opportunity to engage in community development
processes through action research.

INTERNATIONALIZINGDOCTORAL EDUCATION ATHOME

I have some thoughts to share about what it might mean to internationalize doctoral
education at one’s home university. My comments relate to teaching in the doctoral
program at the Jane AddamsCollege of SocialWork. As a doctoral program,we have not
made a decision to internationalize our curriculum. Yet, my experience with the doc-
toral program in Ethiopia is influencing my teaching at UIC. Global issues, large policy
frameworks, and innovative practices fromdeveloping countries can be used to expose
students to different ways of thinking about recalcitrant social problems in the United
States. Here are some ideas:

• The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (and others). Child welfare
systems in the United States are built on the premise of “the best interests
of the child.” In developing countries (as well as other industrialized ones),

Timeline Assignment Projects in Gedam Sefer

Fall 2004 Community Community assessment on slum upgrading
MSW Student Assessment program: The case of Gedam Sefer community
Team (Hagos, Gessese, Kebede, Abebe, Goshu, Barry, &

Yared, 2004).

Summer 2005 Slum housing and income generation:Women’s
Research role in obtaining public housing in Ethiopia

(Johnson Butterfield, Kebede, & Gessese, 2005).

Fall 2005 Community Assessment of beggars community in Arada
MSW Student Assessment Sub-city Addis Ababa (Mekonnen, Hailu,
Team Bezabih, Nega, Jonfa, & B/Mesquel, 2005).

Spring 2006 Field Three students placed in local government
Placement office.

Spring 2006 Thesis Project– Social networks and communication among
MSW Student MSW Program female householders (Kebede, 2006).

Spring 2006 Thesis Project– Human strengths approach for sustainable
MSW Student MSW Program livelihood (Gessese, 2006).

Fall 2006 Action Research Take research back to the community. Form a
Ph.D. Team Mini-Project I Core Group to work with AAU and UIC in

university-community partnership.

2007 Ph.D. Action Workshop with Core Group on Family Based
Team Research Mini- Community Development (Kordesh, 2006).

Project II Discuss university-community partnership.
Form a Technical Committee.

2007 Ph.D. Planning a Develop a major action research proposal in
Team Major Action collaboration with Core Group and Technical

Research Committee.
Project

Table 2: Action Projects in the Gedam Sefer Community



Johnson Butterfield/THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF DOCTORAL EDUCATION 247

the guiding principle for child welfare is the “rights of the child.”
Juxtaposing these two policy agendas will place child welfare policy in the
United States in a global perspective.What would a child welfare system in
the United States or Canada look like if our policies incorporated some or
more of the idea of children’s rights? Why hasn’t the United States signed
this declaration? Some discussion of this topic is included in the American
Psychologist (c.f., Levesque, 1996; Melton, 2005; Murphy-Berman,
Levesque, & Berman, 1996).

• Comparative Analysis.Much social work research on poverty seems to lack
comparative or international perspectives. Recently, I was privy to hear Dr.
Jeffrey Sachs from Columbia University speak. His book, The End of Poverty:
EconomicPossibilities ofOurTimebrings a global perspective topoverty pol-
icy (Sachs, 2005). Can one imagine such a title to a book?Who can imagine
ending poverty? This book shows methods of comparative social policy by
looking at the nations and GIS mapping of such things as the re-location of
the textile industry, availability of Internet access, the malaria belts of the
world, and so on. He also features what some countries, India and Korea for
example, have done to make progress toward ending poverty. As a macro-
economist, Sachs quips about his expertise in “long and short division,”
while calling for “clinical economics”—a perspective that takes researchers
out to the field to examine poverty first-hand, then works directly with the
poor to solvepoverty from their perspectives, basedon their strengths.There
is some recent comparativework onwelfare and theworkingpoor population
in the United States (e.g., Hoefer &Midgley, 2006). The challenge for doctor-
al education in a global world is to advance policy research in social work to
include comparative analysis. A good resource is Rihoux and Grimm (2006).

• Millennium Development Goals. Faculty, practitioners, and students of
community practice in the developed world have paid little attention to
the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by the United Nations for
decreasing global poverty by one-half by the target year of 2015. The eight
goals of this relatively unnoticed framework range from halting the spread
of HIV/AIDS, to ensuring environmental sustainability, from promoting
gender equality and the empowerment of women to providing universal
primary education. TheMDGs form a blueprint agreed to by all the world’s
countries and all the world’s leading development institutions. Sachs and
UN Secretary Kofi Annan are working with some villages in Africa to see
what it takes to meet the MDGs.What does it take for a village community
to get out of extreme poverty, to position itself on the lowest rung of the
economic ladder? Early findings indicate the following: medicine, a truck,
one Internet hook-up, fertilizer, and bed nets. Bed nets treated with insec-
ticide last for five years and cost fifty cents per person. They will prevent
half of the malaria cases each year. One dollar will provide three days of
malaria treatment for each infected person. Just one day of the U.S. mili-
tary budget ($150 billion) will buy bed nets for all of Africa for five years.We
could extrapolate this kind of thinking to community development efforts
in communities with extreme poverty in the developed world.



ADVANCES IN SOCIALWORK248

• Community Development. As a planned approach to improving the living
conditions of poor and vulnerable populations around the world, commu-
nity development responds to diverse global contexts. In the developing
world, conditions of abject poverty noticeably require comprehensive and
interdisciplinary approaches that include economic development, com-
munity participation, self-help, community organizing, capacity building,
and so on from many disciplines and modes of intervention (Johnson
Butterfield & Chisanga, in press; Johnson Butterfield & Korazim-Korosy,
2007). Creative efforts also seem to emerge in the developing world in an
environment where less is sometimes more: there are less supports, but
there may also be fewer barriers to getting things done by mobilizing
human resources. Evidence from promising models and methods of com-
munity development include, among others, the effects of participatory
asset-based approaches to alleviating poverty (O’Leary, 2006), the evi-
denced-basedRapid-Results Approach [http://www.rapidresults.org/], and
community conversations (Gebre & Admassie, 2005).

• Action Research, Measurement, and Evaluation. Action research designs
combine quantitative and qualitative methods (Reason & Bradbury, 2006).
Action research is also applicable to larger scale efforts at the community
level, which are designed to foster participation, empower individuals, and
so on. Providing doctoral students with methods applicable to larger sys-
tems should be a part of doctoral research training, so that within these
larger systems, smaller studies can assess individual and group outcomes
with particular measures at the psychosocial level. There is much work to
be done by the World Bank in measuring empowerment (Narayan, 2005;
Alsop, Bertelsen, & Holland, 2006) and one can suppose that the interna-
tional community is far ahead of our ability in social work to define and
measure empowerment. Action research methods also teach teamwork
and collaboration in research. By exposing our doctoral students to solid
methods in action research, we can prepare them for team collaboration in
research as junior faculty of the future.

My last comment presents challenges to deans and directors of doctoral
education in social work.What would doctoral education look like if these
two things happened?

• Expand Doctoral Education Within a Developing Country. The first
challenge is for each doctoral program in the United States and
Canada to become involved in expanding doctoral educationwithin a
developing country. This does not mean educating international stu-
dents in doctoral programs at our home universities with the assump-
tion that they plan to return to their homelands after completing their
doctoral degrees. The partnership idea described in this article is just
one of many potential and possible ways that doctoral programs con-
tribute to building faculty capacity abroad. Higher Education for
Development (HED) continues to provide USAID funding for such
partnerships [http://www.hedprogram.org]. Online courses or other
distance learning methods could be used to share doctoral courses



Johnson Butterfield/THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF DOCTORAL EDUCATION 249

and faculty from one country to another. These models represent a
movewithin universities as awhole to“globalize” their systems inwhat
is becoming a nationalmovement towards globalizing the campus. For
example, since the mid-1990s, a number of large universities have
opened new campuses in other countries, particularly India, the
Middle East, and Southeast Asia, with new growth occurring in China,
India, and Central Asia. These branch campuses move beyond a place
to send students for study abroad but are designed to educate the pop-
ulation from the host country (MacBurnie & Ziguras, 2005). Social
work doctoral education should be at the forefront and lead the way
toward internationalizing the profession.

• Preparing Doctoral Students for International Work.
Internationalizing doctoral social work education in the United States
and Canada would mean that each new recipient of the degree is well
prepared to include international perspectives in his or her teaching
and research. By internationalizing doctoral education, can we break
out of the old paradigm that cautions our junior faculty not to pursue
internationalwork until they get tenure? Can the newparadigmbe that
those junior faculty who are involved internationally in their research
and service aremore competitive in the job market and tenure review
processes? Can we imagine a world of social work faculty and
researchers with doctorate degrees who are involved in the reality of
the global world in some way? This does not mean that everyone has
to travel abroad.We know, for example, that the Internet can put us in
direct contact with the world. The world is flat. Comparative policies
can be taught in the classroom. Learning from innovative practices in
other countries has the potential to inform the profession, its current
methods, and standards. Scholarship can build on and help build the
best practices—not only in our home countries—but in those coun-
tries throughout the world that share our professional work.

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Author’s Note:

Address correspondence to: Professor Alice K. Johnson Butterfield, Jane Addams College of Social Work,
University of Illinois at Chicago, 1040 West Harrison Street (M/C 309), Chicago, IL 60411, USA. e-mail:
akj@uic.edu.

This article is based on keynote speeches given at the Group for the Advancement of Doctoral
Education (GADE), Calgary, Canada, on October 13, 2006; and the 11th Annual Ph.D. Spring Symposium at
the School of SocialWork, Indiana University, Indianapolis, Indiana, on April 20, 2007. This article is ded-
icated to the memory of Dr. Seyoum Gebre Selassie, former Dean and Professor Emeritus at Addis Ababa
University. His vision for the rebirth of social work education in Ethiopia continues to guide our work. It is
one of the great privileges of my professional life to have worked with him and to have learned so much
from him.

251Johnson Butterfield/THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF DOCTORAL EDUCATION