This book provides an analytical exploration of the condition of teachers working in expanding school systems across the world, with a particular focus on the lives of women teachers in rural Sub-Saharan Africa. Drawing from award-winning research, it looks beyond the official portrayals of teachers’ lives in order to better understand the reality of the contexts in which teachers live and work. Positioning Amartya Sen’s capability approach at the heart of the study, each chapter considers documentary evidence alongside ethnographic research from rural, remote and under-resourced schools in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and Sudan. Interweaving rich narratives from teachers in a variety of contexts, the book proposes a concept of professional capability and examines female teachers’ agency to pursue and achieve this in their classrooms. This key examination challenges existing notions of ‘quality education’ and reveals insights into the broader purpose of schooling for rural communities. Quality Teaching and the Capability Approach will be of value to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in education, particularly those concerned with gender, development and teaching, as well as educationalists and policy makers concerned with education and development.

The Capability Approach founded by Armatya Sen and Martha Nussbaum offers a justicebased analytical framework for human development. The contributions to the present volume show how the Capability Approach can be applied productively in empirical analyses of the life situations of young people and the educationalinstitutions they attend in different parts of the world including Serbia, Kosovo, Kenya, India, Greece, and Germany. Moreover, the volume helps to extend the Capability Approach by relating it to different theoretical and methodological approaches such as the capability concept of Paul Ricoeur, critical materialism, critical discourse analysis, and biographical research. Thus, the volume delivers comprehensive insights into the social (in) justices to be found not only on the level of individual life paths but also in institutions and in educational policy while showing innovative ways of applying the Capability Approach in the social sciences.

This book explores the pivotal role that geography as a school subject plays in helping every young person achieve their educational potential. Expressed as ‘GeoCapabilities’, this concept draws on the the capabilities approach developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum applied to curriculum thinking in schools. While traditional subjects have often been deemed irrelevant and outdated in an overcrowded secondary school curriculum, subjects like geography have often been lost or combined with others to fulfil a broad skills agenda. More recent talk of a ‘knowledge led’ curriculum can often lead to the recitation of facts at the expense of developing deeper understanding. This book argues the concept of powerful geographical knowledge, based on the work of Michael Young and David Lambert, invests the subject of geography with its educational potential: this forms the basis of GeoCapabilities. GeoCapabilities focuses on both what is being taught and why, and as such provides a framework of curriculum thinking which will be of interest and value to geography teachers, school leaders with curriculum development responsibilities and all those interested in the capability approach and the moral imperative of education.

In developing countries across the world, qualified teachers are a rarity, with thousands of untrained adults taking over the role and millions of children having no access to schooling at all. Teacher Education and the Challenge of Development is co-written by experts working across a wide range of developing country situations. It provides a unique overview of the crisis surrounding the provision of high-quality teachers in the developing world, and how these teachers are crucial to the alleviation of poverty. The book explores existing policy structures and identifies the global pressures on teaching, which are particularly acute in developing economies.

This compelling book introduces Nobel laureate Amartya Sen's capability approach and explores its significance for theory, policy and practice in education. The book looks particularly at questions concerning the education of children, gender equality, and higher education. Contributors hail from the UK, USA, Australia, Italy and Mexico.

First Published in 2009. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Capabilities Approach The authors assess the potentials and pitfalls of the Capabilities Approach to issues of education and welfare. Renowned philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, economists and educational scientists explore the conceptual and practical implications of this approach for delivering socially just policies. The volume analyses the potentials and pitfalls of the Capabilities Approach (CA) which was initially developed by the Indian economist Amartya Sen and the American philosopher Martha Nussbaum. CA is considered as a philosophical approach to social justice, a scientific approach to research welfare production and eventually as a potentially new practically adoptable fundament for educational and social service delivery. CA is one of the currently most influential attempts to reconcile the competing demands which are associated with the fundamental conceptions of equality, recognition and liberty and advocates an egalitarian, political conception of social justice which is concerned with the cultivation, maximization and just distribution of the (real) freedom of individuals. Renowned philosophers, sociologists, psychologists, economists and educational scientists investigate the complex relation of education and welfare against the background of major economic, political and cultural transformations within and across European societies.

This book innovatively explores how universities might be engines of reform and be directed towards social change. Using rich case studies drawn from South African research, the book comprehensively provides a myriad of new perspectives on what constitutes a set of appropriate public-good professional capabilities that will translate successfully into contributions to human development. It challenges universities to produce professionals who have the knowledge, skills and values to improve the lives of people living in poverty in urban and rural settings. It covers issues such as: Conceptualising Public-Good Professionalism Global Issues and Professional Education South African Debates about Higher Education Institutional conditions and professional education arrangements Social Constraints on educating ethically aware public professionals By drawing on an approach that focuses on differing public-good professional capabilities in five professions, this book produces a crucial new framework for the preparation of professionals relevant to the global study of higher education policy. It expands higher education’s contribution to global social justice beyond a concern with human capital, administering a challenge to higher education internationally to address human development in the 21st century. This book will be of great interest to all scholars of higher education involved in higher education studies, comparative education, and development studies. It will also prove valuable to policy makers, higher education leaders and lecturers and graduate professionals in diverse organizations.

How can human capabilities be articulated and promoted in practice? How can the challenges encountered in its application be addressed? This volume answers these research questions through nine country case studies from the Global North and the Global South.

This book explores the idea that teaching and learning – pedagogy – at universities is a crucial space for students’ formation as ethical graduates, equipped with knowledge, skills and values to contribute to more equal societies. We know that universities across the globe do not stand apart from social and educational inequalities at multiple levels; they have the potential to reproduce or reduce social inequalities and therefore towards transformative ends. This book suggests how this could be achieved both via policy and practice around the globe