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The paper discusses repair as valuable for thinking about and acting towards sustainable human development. Repair asks us to take account of intersections of past, present, and reimagined futures; the end is becoming and being full human beings with dignity, attentive to the lives of others and to what Achille Mbembe calls the "living world". We seek to repair that which is valuable to us, while also setting aside what cannot be fixed (for example colonialism and apartheid). The concept of repair is proposed as a lens to think about some disrepair challenges facing development: the enduring effects of history on justice, skewed global knowledge relations, and racism. The ideas are then applied to the space of education. A repair praxis framework is proposed based on four overlapping dimensions: conviviality as incompleteness; advancing epistemic freedoms; fostering transformational learning; and, spaces of dialogue and participation. The paper concludes with an example of renaming the world to repair the world and finally reminds us that we should pay attention to who we are with others, to what we repair, and to the kind of ancestors we choose to be for future generations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addition, international development researchers may sometimes unknowingly reinforce and reproduce knowledge asymmetries, ignoring the knowledges that communities possess or the limits on their own reflexivity in the absence of epistemic humility. They conceptualise university capabilities towards climate justice as "the resources, systems, relationships, values and organisational culture that shape the capabilities of universities to promote social and environmental outcomes". They showcase how the dialogical and participatory nature of collaboration among the research team (local researchers, desk researchers, intermediaries in the field and PI) were crucial in bringing the realities of the communities where their research were conducted into epistemic production spaces to diversify knowledge and initiate a locally-rooted research process. [Extracted from the article]

Meaningful participation of people as agents in development practice has been a central concern in capabilitarian scholarship and of Amartya Sen's own work, as a valuable freedom and functioning in itself. Yet, there has been limited attention until now about knowledge generation processes and who is fully included, despite a growing body of literature arguing for pluriversality and decolonial approaches against historical and geographical inequalities at many levels. The paper proposes that capabilitarian scholarship could be enriched by considering a pluriverse of methodological perspectives, building on the work already undertaken but taking it further to create multi-epistemic conversations. This paper explores why the methodological and cosmological – onto-epistemological – unexplored areas of participatory research in capabilitarian scholarship should be embedded in our research culture and practice for more inclusive, decolonial, methodologically challenging empirical strategies (beyond methods and methodologies) that will place those situated at the margins of epistemic divisions and conflicts in the centre of knowledge production and debates. To this end and adding to the debates, the paper first considers participatory projects reported on in the journal before presenting an original framing of a capabilitarian participatory paradigm. The paper further proposes some principles that underpin its operationalisation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper takes up Sen's concerns with education on the one hand and public reasoning on the other, and shows that his concerns require that formal education develop a capability that potentially fosters inclusive public reasoning in all students. Drawing on and extending Miranda Fricker's work, and informed by a global South positionality and empirical research, the argument is made for an epistemic capability that includes attention to the cognitive and knowledge but also to a domain of sharing and giving values. How this capability can be fostered and how it can also be thwarted is discussed. Finally, a concern with how an adequate living standard underpins this epistemic capability and the goodness of an educational life that a student can lead is considered. Overall, the paper argues that education—and fostering an epistemic capability—can make a crucial contribution to inclusive reasoning and democratic participation in a (more) just society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on a participatory action research (PAR) project as a potential space for undergraduate students at one South African university to develop as political agents. Participation and reasoning, grounded in reciprocal relationships, which are fundamental in a PAR project are introduced. The contributions of the capability approach and the case for the significance of relational capabilities of voice and participation as both objectively and ethically good is proposed, before turning to Arendt as a partner to capabilities in her conceptualization of speech and action as constituting the public sphere through participation. The claim is made that a PAR project might establish such a public space thereby enabling political agents to “appear”; this is especially important in connecting PAR to democratic actions. The paper turns to the operationalization of these ideas by considering empirical data from a gender equity PAR project at a South African university. The evidence suggests the possibility for the formation of student researchers as political agents and identifies the relational and relationship-embedded political subjectivity capabilities that matter for personal and collective development and change. In conclusion, the paper argues that a PAR project can be capabilities-promoting, advancing freedoms so that subjects can come into being in a common project, even if that project is temporary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The complex transformative intent of policy goals is often marginalized in favour of tangible, measurable outcomes. Such a pattern is evident in the tracking of global social justice goals, such as gender equality, where sole reliance on numerical parity data to track progress has led to the simplification of the concept for the sake of measurement. This intensifies the need to focus both on conceptual and methodological considerations in policy development and evaluation to enhance human development and promote the transformation of inequalities towards social justice. Through reporting on a mixed-methods process to inform and develop a capabilities-based gender equality policy at a South African university, the paper asks what gender equality should look like conceptually, and identifies empirically valued functionings and capabilities which could act as transformative policy evaluation indicators. The paper reports on diverse student data from 57 qualitative interviews and 843 survey respondents, which indicate differences between what social groups value and where interventions are needed. The paper suggests that the capabilities approach could be an important evidence-based policy driver in higher education, with the possibility to combine both a rich conceptual approach and methodological considerations in operationalization so that social justice goals and outcomes result. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Evidence from international literature shows that despite interventions and policies, students with disabilities face persistent challenges in higher education. The capabilities approach can take us forward in addressing these challenges in two ways. Nussbaum's version of the capabilities approach, in particular, provides us with an analytical framework to explore valued opportunities and freedoms from a social justice perspective. Secondly, in line with Sen's argument, the approach can serve as the informational base for disability policies. In this study, the capabilities approach is operationalized within education by applying Walker's list of eight valued freedoms and opportunities to students with disabilities. Data are drawn from a qualitative study examining the processes through which students with disabilities at two South African universities make their educational choices and negotiate different structures on their way to, and in higher education. These students identified key valued freedoms and opportunities that are needed to access and succeed in higher education. Four of the eight valued freedoms and opportunities on Walker's list emerged strongly in this study. Seven other valued freedoms and opportunities which fall outside of Walker's list were also identified. These 11 key valued freedoms and opportunities, we argue, are needed for the formulation of socially just disability-inclusive policies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper outlines and explores a key obstacle to evaluating education policy using the capability approach. According to the capability approach, education policy should be targeted towards expanding people's capabilities. Values are central to an individual's capability set, because they determine the functionings important to them, and therefore the capabilities which are valuable to that individual. However, it is argued here that education has a more complex function than other areas of social policy, as education is able to influence and transfer values much more directly. How do we examine the relationship between education and the expansion of an individual's capabilities, if at the same time the process of education may directly determine the very nature of the capability set itself? As a solution, a form of education is proposed that would enable students to become aware of the values they hold, and develop them further through fostering critical thinking, practical reason, and access to knowledge, rather than directly imparting values to students. We illustrate this drawing on a recent project on higher education and transformation in South Africa. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An introduction is presented in which the editor discusses various reports within the issue on topics including the global dimensions of gender and education, human diversity in relation to public reasoning and gender justice, and the case of anti-racist education in Norway.