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This paper re-considers girls' education in Turkey from both a capabilities and a feminist perspective. First, it critically looks at the policies, legislation, and NGO and government led campaigns aiming to increase girls' enrolment, and points out the lack of feminist perspectives and concerns in these initiatives. Then, drawing from 20 in-depth interviews with girls and 5 interviews with teachers in the most socio-economically deprived region of Turkey, the paper explores girls' schooling and educational opportunities in Eastern Turkey from a combined capabilities and feminist perspective, in order to generate a richer information basis than numbers alone for policy and evaluation. The findings tease out capabilities which are missing in the focus of policies and campaigns, and invite a re-design of educational policies and initiatives from a capabilities-focused praxis that is context and gender sensitive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Statistics show that student enrolment in higher education institutions in South Africa has dramatically increased over the past years, a clear indication that higher education (HE) is addressing issues of equitable access in the wake of an exclusionary apartheid past. Despite these positive trends, there are still marginalised groups in society about whom we know little, and who risk being overlooked both in access statistics and at the level of actual lives. The article therefore outlines the aspirations and challenges for vulnerable young people in accessing higher education, based on a case study conducted at Orange Farm informal settlement in South Africa. A qualitative approach, using Sen (2009, 1999a) and Nussbaum's (2011) capabilities approach (CA) was adopted as the conceptual frame for the light it casts on real lives, opportunities and plural achievements, with empirical data collected through face-to-face interviews with purposively selected young people living in an Orange Farm orphanage. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to understand historically and contextually the well-being and agency of selected female teachers in Turkey. The paper develops a justice model based on the capability approach to build on the relation between freedom and equality, and to take gender and cultural diversity as a key element. The research draws on results from in-depth biographical narratives of 15 participants from west Turkey, examining the real freedoms and opportunities of three different generations of female teachers through constructing a gendered look into women''s lives. The study begins by developing a framework linking women''s opportunities and freedoms drawing its normative compass from Martha Nussbaum''s capabilities approach. It explores how female teachers’ well-being can be understood in relation to key capabilities that individuals, communities and society have reason to value and how these capabilities and functionings can be expanded or constrained. The paper argues for the significance of thinking about capabilities in the professional lives of teachers who work for social change. Through a historical and generational sequence, it captures the egalitarian aspects of the capability approach, and strengthens its emphasis on freedoms of women. The findings of this enquiry indicate that there are persistent economic, cultural, ethnical, structural and gendered inequalities in women''s lives, but that women also have agency to bring changes in their lives and through their teaching. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: In a world of tremendous inequalities, this paper explores two contrasting normative models for education policy, and the relationship of each to policy, practices and outcomes that can improve lives by reducing injustice and building societies which value capabilities for all. The first model is that of human capital which currently dominates contemporary education policy globally, harnessing education policy to economic growth imperatives so that development through education is the means to the end of increased resources and income. The second model draws on the work of Amartya Sen to present a human capabilities model of education policy in which human lives are the end of development and the education focus is on promoting capabilities and functionings to choose a good life. An argument is advanced for capabilities as the superior approach. The paper closes by noting the problematic of social change and struggle demanded by a transformative view of education and how or if the capability approach is adequate to the task. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper reports on a research project investigating the role of universities in South Africa in contributing to poverty reduction through the quality of their professional education programmes. The focus here is on theorising and the early operationalisation of multi-layered, multi-dimensional transformation based on ideas from Amartya Sen''s capability approach. Key features of a professionalism oriented to public service, which in South Africa must mean the needs and lives of the poor, are outlined. These features include: the demand from justice; the expansion of the comprehensive capabilities both of the poor and professional capability formation to be able to act in ‘pro-poor’ ways; and, praxis pedagogies which shape this connected process. This theorisation is then tentatively operationalised in a process of selecting transformation dimensions. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]