Co-convenors: Mark Mason, UNESCO International Bureau of Education and Hong Kong Institute of Education
This sub-theme identifies the research paradigms – and the values underlying them –that have prevailed in the field of education and development research over the last 15 years, and considers which research paradigms, conceptualizations of the field, values and ethical approaches might best serve the field beyond 2015. These questions interrogated in this sub-theme are situated within at least the following two dimensions in research design. The first encompasses the methodological issues related to the epistemological paradigm in which researchers might have chosen to work. Here, researchers normally ask whether their epistemological framework and its methodological correlates will give them a reasonable shot at the truth. The second dimension has to do with the normative questions that are inevitably associated with research in the social sciences. In the field of educational development, for example, research probably yields the most worthwhile results, at least with respect to the goals of equality and equity, when researchers attempt, from the very conceptualization of their projects, “to identify the axes along which educational and other goods are differentially distributed, and to disaggregate their object of study along those axes” (Mason, 2007, “Comparing Cultures”, p. 196) – and thus to get at the values, discourses, power and interests that underlie such differential distributions.
Available Papers
Teachers’ professional lives in rural Sub-Saharan Africa: an analysis of different perspectives, values and capabilities
Alison Buckler, Research Associate, The Open University, UK
Over the last decade vast sums have been invested in Sub-Saharan Africa to enhance education quality. Yet improvements in quality – when interpreted as enhanced pupil attainment – are disappointing. This paper shows how Amartya Sen’s capability approach can help answer the call for a renewed focus on, and reconceptualisation of, education quality. It is increasingly understood that what teachers do, matters. Drawing on a recently completed PhD, primary level teachers from five countries (Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and Sudan) provide a focus for exploring the relationship between official representations of teachers’ work and the professional lives teachers create and experience. In the larger study, lists of professional capabilities were extrapolated from policy documents around teachers’ work and from the perspectives of teachers themselves. The professional capability of seven female teachers in rural and under-resourced schools was then analysed: that is, the extent to which they were able to pursue and achieve capabilities from each perspective. This paper draws out some highlights of this analysis, particularly in reference to the disconnections between official and teacher perceptions of the teacher role and teacher quality: teachers’ professional capabilities, for example, were far more aligned with the needs of their communities rather than official guidelines. The paper also challenges theoretical understandings of the capability approach and proposes a cyclical model (as opposed to the predominantly linear model) of professional capability for teachers in a form that could engage research and policy communities defining and pursuing education quality in the post 2015 agenda.
Action Research and the development of primary school leadership capabilities: Evidence from Ghana
Michael Fertig, Lecturer in Education, University of Bath, UK
The relationship between Action Research and the Capability Approach, as developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum among others, is a fundamental one, in that both have a core focus on action as a means to social improvement. A central element here is Nussbaum’s concern that ‘the crucial good [that] societies should be promoting for their people is a set of opportunities, or substantial freedoms, which people then may or may not exercise in action: the choice is theirs’ (Nussbaum, 2011, p 18). The importance placed here on ‘action’ in order to achieve that which is regarded as ‘valuable’ relates directly to the view taken by Kurt Lewin in the 1940s when he presented an Action Research approach to problem solving. My argument is that, through an emphasis upon Action Research, school leaders can move from a position where they have ‘capabilities’ (or potential) to take action to improve pupil learning towards a position where they can provide evidence of ‘functionings’ (or actions) which can improve pupil learning within their schools. In this sense, Action Research acts as a kind of vector which enables the conversion of ‘capabilities’ into ‘functionings’. This notion builds on the Aristotelian view of ‘phronesis’ or ‘practical philosophy’, in which individuals are able, through practical reasoning, to act in ways which cultivate virtue and which are of moral value (Carr, 2004; Eikeland, 2006). My paper examines the Capability Approach within the context of education, with specific reference to its relationship to the development of primary school leadership capabilities in Ghana. This builds upon my involvement in the DfID-funded EdQual Project (2005-2010) which resulted in work which looked at the relationship between primary school leaders and social justice within Ghana and Tanzania (Bosu et al, 2011). This Project was concerned with examining factors which could impact upon the learning of pupils attending schools located in challenging contexts in these two countries. The spotlight on these factors mirrors the increasing emphasis, within discussions about the post-2015 development policy landscape, upon moving the debate on from calls for ‘Education for All’ towards an agenda which foregrounds ‘Learning for All’ (International Bank for Reconstruction & Development/World Bank, 2012). Linked to this, my conference paper will develop ideas focused on ways in which school leader capabilities can be converted, through the use of an Action Research approach, into functionings which aid the learning of pupils (Fertig, 2012).
Skills Development Research: The importance of human agency – applying the capability approach to the evaluation of VET
Lesley Powell, PhD Researcher, University of Nottingham
Currently much of the research undertaken on Vocational Education and Training (VET) is quantitative in methodology and overly structural in its theoretical framing. It emphasizes the skills development system, the institution and the economy and does so at the expense of human agency, particularly that of the students who study at VET institutions and the staff who work therein. In response to these dominant approaches, through a discussion of evaluation research related to the South African Further Education and Training (FET) colleges, I explore the implications of the capability approach for VET evaluation. Two issues are at stake. The first relates to the ‘information basis’ of evaluative research undertaken on the FET colleges and the assumptions that are made as to the role and purpose of the sector in selecting these rather than other information sets. The second relates to the processes of inclusion and exclusion that takes place during evaluation research and the voices included and excluded during these processes. The central argument is that the focus on expanding the wellbeing of individuals in the capability approach provides a revised normative framework for the evaluation of VET which differs significantly from the emphasis in productivist approaches on employability and from the input and output measures of institutional and sectoral efficiency that dominate instrumental approaches.
“We’re improving the quality of teaching”: conceptualising ‘quality and ‘change’ using lessons from a current TESSA project
Kris Stutchbury, Director Initial Teacher Education, The Open University
Jane Cullen, Director of TESSA, The Open University
Whilst ‘change’ in educational practices and ‘quality’ in teaching are often used in discourses as taken-for-granted terms in education and development, these are concepts differently constructed across cultural and national contexts. However, it is accepted that a focus on ‘quality’ is required. Student outcomes in Africa are poor and are seen as not contributing to human capability development as much as they could. This is despite many worthwhile and well-intentioned interventions from the international community, designed to promote a more learner-centred approach to education. This paper draws on experience from other disciplines and argues that the field of educational development would benefit from the clear articulation of a theory of implementation so that project designers better understand the processes through which new practices become routinely embedded in everyday life. We will argue that Normalisation Process Theory (NPT) could form the basis of such a theory. We will draw on experiences gathered during the Teacher Education in Sub Saharan Africa (TESSA) Teaching Lower Secondary Science project in order to explain the basic tenets of the theory. The theory identifies four generative mechanisms through which new practices become embedded; we will argue that one of these – cognitive participation – has been neglected and that understanding this mechanism in particular is crucial to the success of educational development projects.
The Barefoot College’s Solar Night Schools: financial self-sustainability for scalability
Emilia Szekely, Doctoral Researcher, Hong Kong Institute of Education
This study sought ways of enhancing both the self-sustainability and the scalability of the Barefoot College’s Night Schools Program in India. This Program provides opportunities to receive education at night for children who would otherwise be excluded from school – typically, young girls, who are often required by their families to assist in household duties while their brothers attend school. Our working hypotheses were grounded, on the Complexity and Capabilities approaches – the key practical consequences of which, in the field of development, imply a modality of integrated service delivery, and the enhancement of the capabilities of the programs’ beneficiaries and their ‘ownership’ of the programs. Interviews were conducted with key stakeholders in the Night Schools, and financial and other pertinent documentary data were gathered. We then conducted an investigation, with a comparative perspective, of the models of relevantly similar initiatives in other parts of the world – notably in Mexico and on the Amazon River – specifically, questions to do with resourcing, organizational structure, financial sustainability and scalability. These investigations involved site visits, interviews and bibliographical research. Insights generated from this study indicate that the values, ethics and methodological implications associated with the Complexity and Capabilities approaches might provide new conceptualizations in education and development research in the post-2015 period.
Inclusive Research or Academic Grabbing – A case for ethical approaches in International Education and Development Research in the Global South
Jana Zehle, Addis Ababa University
Ever since the Paris Declaration (2005) the terms ‘development partners’ and ‘development cooperation’ have been widely adopted by donors, atleast to refer to themselves. In research and academia however, the language of partnership is far from being implemented in the practice of how research is undertaken or in the use of methods forobtaining knowledge on ‘the other’, e.g. the development partners in the Global South. Driven bytheir career endeavours international scholars often start their ‘academic safari’ to verify output criteria defined by global policy makers, and accordingly, based on utilitarian ethics, research methods are selected. Freire’s reminder that concerned people should not just be incidental to the curiosity and ambition of the researcher but also be masters of inquiry into the underlying causes ofthe events in their world (Freire 1993) expresses very well that too often unhelpful courses have been followed in the field of education and development research over the least 15 years. It would seem time to reflect, review and revise the prevailing research paradigm towards one that focuses on the interests of the concerned people and the improvement of their personal and socio-economic situation. To reach these objectives, researchers and research subjects must enroll in an authentic dialogue and build up horizontal relationships within an inclusive research paradigm.