Amartya Sen's Capability Approach and Social Justice in Education

by Walker, Melanie; Unterhalter, Elaine

• ISBN13: 9780230104594
• ISBN10: 0230104592
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2010-06-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This compelling book introduces Nobel laureate, Amartya Sen's, capability approach, and explores its significance for theory, policy and practice in education. The capability approachhas attracted attention across disciplinary boundaries in recent years contributing to debates in economics, political philosophy, health and social policy. This book complements these discussions by considering the potential of the approach for work in education, showing how the capability approach challenges some of the key assumptions of human capital theory and how it can provide substance for policy and practice in education concerned with social justice. The book looksparticularly at questions concerning the education of children, gender equality, and higher education.Contributors hail from the UK, USA, Australia, Italy and Mexico.

Author Biography

Melanie Walker is Professor of Higher Education and Director of Research in the School of Education at the University of Nottingham, U.K. and Extraordinary Professor at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. She is director of a PhD program in Higher Education, and contributes to teaching on the MA in Higher Education and the Professional Doctorate. Her teaching and research interests focus on human development and global higher education policy; professional education, graduate capabilities, and university contributions to poverty reduction; and pedagogies and social justice. She is co-editor of the Journal of Human Development and Capabilities. Her recent books include Higher Education Pedagogies: a capabilities approach (2006); and The Routledge Doctoral Supervisor’s Companion and The Routledge Doctoral Student’s Companion, both edited with Pat Thomson (2010).

Elaine Unterhalter contributes to teaching on post graduate courses in education and international development at the Institute of Education in London. She specializes in gender, education, and development and is currently leading two research projects with this focus: one funded by the ESRC and one by ActionAid. She has extensive experience editing collections of papers and journals. Her most recent edited collection is Oxfam's Beyond Access: Transforming Policy and Practice for Gender Equality in Education (with Sheila Aikman, 2005). She is one of the co-editors of the journal Theory and Research in Education.

Table of Contents

The Capability Approach: Its Potential for Work in Education--Melanie Walker and Elaine Unterhalter * Part I: Theoretical Perspectives on the Capability Approach and Education * Education as a Basic Capability--Lorella Terzi *

Situating Education in the Human Capabilities Approach--Pedro Flores-Crespo *

Developing Capabilities and the Management of Trust--Richard Bates * Distribution of What for Achieving Equality in Education?  The Case of  Education for All--Elaine Unterhalter and Harry Brighouse * Needs, Rights and Capabilities

--Elaine Unterhalter * Part II: Applications of the Capability Approach in Education * Freedom through Education: Measuring Capabilities in Girls' Schooling--Rosie Vaughan * Education and Capabilities in Bangladesh--Janet Raynor * South African Girls' Lives and Capabilities--Melanie Walker * Children's Valued Capabilities--Mario Biggeri * Higher Education and Well Being--Luisa Deprez and Sandra Butler * Part III:  Taking the Capability Approach Forward in Education * Education, Agency and Social Justice--

Elaine Unterhalter and Melanie Walker