Responsabilidad Social

The Capability Approach and Education Elaine Unterhalter, Rosie Vaughan and Melanie Walker This article was published in Prospero, November 2007. It is based on a briefing written by the authors for the Human Development and Capability Association (HDCA), which can be found online at http://www.capabilityapproach.com/ Evaluating Education The capability approach provides a general normativeframework for the assessment of human development. Yet it is also possible to consider what it has to offer to evaluations of specific areas of social policy, such as education. In recent years there has been growing international interest from people working in diverse sectors and fields of formal, informal and non-formal education in the potential of the capability approach to contribute ideas,policies and practices. This introductory article is concerned with how the capability approach might be used in educational settings and thinking about educational inequalities. The key idea of the capability approach is that social arrangements should aim to expand people’s capabilities – their freedom to promote or achieve ‘functionings’ which are important to them. ‘Functionings’ are defined as thevaluable activities and states that make up people’s well-being, such as having a healthy body, being safe, or having a good job. They are related to goods and income, but they describe what a person is able to do or be as a result – for example, when a person’s need for food (a commodity) is met, they enjoy the functioning of being well-nourished. Capabilities are ‘the alternative combination offunctionings that are feasible for [a person] to achieve’; they are ‘the substantive freedom’ a person has ‘to lead the kind of life he or she has reason to value’ (Sen, 1999: 87). It has only been in the last few years that a number of education researchers have turned to the capability approach, so it is very much a developing area of theory and practice. Consequently, many themes are stillopen to debate. Although engagement with the concept of capability features in the work of both Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum, there are some significant differences between their approaches. Aspects of both have been considered important by education researchers so far. Sen’s work has tended to be used in general discussions of policy and critiques of theories regarding education and the economy.Nussbaum’s work, on the other hand, has been of considerable interest because of her concern with the content and process of education. A number of writers draw on the overlap between both concerns. Some of the reasons why the concept of capability is useful in general assessments of equality between individuals relate to the very broad scope of what is meant by education. Firstly, the capabilityapproach was a response to the limitations of assessments that measure only desire satisfaction, resources, or outcomes. In education, most standard evaluation tools are based on what people say they want from their schooling; resources, for example spending per child; or outcomes in the form of examination results. There are, however, problems relating to each of these. In terms of desiresatisfaction, imagine a situation in which children from low income groups receive only primary education, and children from high earning families attend primary and secondary school. If both groups say they are satisfied, because this is what each has come to expect, then there is no problem in terms of utility or desire satisfaction, as both groups are

apparently equally content. Yet there issomething uncomfortable about this kind of conclusion, however widespread the practice that supports it. A focus on capabilities would require us to evaluate not just satisfaction with individual learning outcomes, but to question the range of real educational choices that have been available to people; whether they had the genuine capability to achieve a valued educational functioning. We would need...