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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 explores a conceptual approach to the question of what it means to provide a university education that addresses equity, and encourages the formation of STEM graduates oriented to public-good values and with commitments to making professional contributions to society which will advance human well-being. It considers and rejects resource-based and utilitarian approaches to well-being and opts for Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach which involves developing graduates' capabilities and functionings to be and do in ways which they have reason to value. The capabilities approach argues for educational and social development as the expansion of such freedoms. The approach is sensitive also to diversity through the focus on the choice of a plurality of functionings and a wide informational basis for policy, practice and social justice evaluations. It allows an analysis of how different individuals can convert available resources into functionings through attending to conversion factors: personal (internal) conversion factors, social conversion factors and environmental (external) conversion factors. All make a difference to how an individual converts her resources into functionings and makes advantage and disadvantage visible. There is a further education-specific issue, that of selecting core valuable capabilities because not any form of science and engineering education will do. Educators need to deliberate and agree which capabilities and corresponding functionings are valuable and so should be supported in policy and practice. In a capabilities-friendly education, education would aim to secure and distribute valuable education capabilities to diverse students (women and men, black and white, rural and urban and so on) paying attention to the social arrangements in education (pedagogies, institutional culture and education policy) and to conversion factors and barriers that might impede the development of opportunities and valued outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The generation of a public-good, capabilities-based approach to professional education in South African universities is outlined and proposed as a contribution to wider social transformation. The relevance and importance of understanding what Amartya Sen describes as ‘capability failure' in the lives of people living in poverty is explored and, following from this, how professionals ought to contribute by virtue of their university education, and hence privilege, to making people's lives go better. The key criterion in developing and evaluating professional education is then how professionals are educated to expand the scope of effective freedoms each person has to lead a life she has reason to value, underpinned at all times with respect for human dignity. The process by which a Professional Capabilities Index (PCI) was generated theoretically and empirically is explained and the argument advanced for the PCI as a practical tool for professional education oriented to improving public services for the poor and, hence, the public good. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The article argues for an alliance of the capability approach developed by Amartya Sen with ideas from critical pedagogy for undergraduate university education which develops student agency and well being on the one hand, and social change towards greater justice on the other. The purposes of a university education in this article are taken to include both intrinsic and instrumental purposes and to therefore include personal development, economic opportunities and becoming educated citizens. Core ideas from the capability approach are outlined, with examples, before possible articulations of capability and Sen's notion of process freedom with critical pedagogy are investigated. It is argued that each approach has something to offer when brought alongside as 'critical capability pedagogies', which seek to enhance and expand student experiences of learning and their 'valuable beings and doings'. Finally core capabilities in a university education are considered and some of the problems of domesticating the capability approach addressed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In global times, university education policy that holds the greatest promise for social responsibility is the focus here; the argument made is that such policy ought to be conceptualised using a normative human development and capabilities approach, drawing on the work of Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum. Their ideas offer a values-based way of seeing higher education policy and development. Reasons are advanced for the necessary contribution of universities to the public good and to poverty reduction, while the contested purposes of universities are further outlined before human development and capabilities are presented for consideration as a superior approach to that of dominant reductionist human capital policies. The political dimension of policy development is acknowledged and explored to show that different normative frameworks generate different policies. The ideas are operationalised in relation to pedagogical arrangements and in the indexing of policy aims informed by human development, against pedagogies and graduate capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

This paper proposes that widening participation in higher education might distinctively be conceptualised beyond economically driven human capital outcomes, as a matter of widening capability. Specifically, the paper proposes forming the capability of students to become and to be 'strong evaluators', able to make reflexive and informed choices about what makes a good life for each of them. Evaluating equality and justice in higher education, and specifically the case of 'widening participation', is then greatly advanced by considering the conceptual tools provided by Amartya Sen's capability approach. The paper therefore elaborates on Sen's ideas and demonstrates their applicability in relation to widening participation student voices gathered in research interviews. Important though Sen's ideas are, there are barriers that stand in the way of taking up these ideas educationally. While three such barriers are acknowledged in the paper, four resources of possibility for recovering widening participation as capability formation from neoliberal and other forms of instrumentalism are also sketched. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a human capabilities approach for evaluating student learning and the social and pedagogical arrangements that support equality in capabilities for all students. It outlines the focus on valuable beings and doings in the capability approach developed by Amartya Sen, and Martha Nussbaum's capabilities focus on human flourishing. For both, education is understood to include both intrinsic and instrumental aims and to be foundational to other important capabilities. A method for applying the capability approach to evaluating what students said about their own learning is suggested, and from this a list of valued functional capabilities is then outlined. The multi-dimensionality of the approach is emphasised and its relationship to economic opportunities and human security. Finally, generic graduate outcomes are considered but rejected as not being the same as capabilities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for a mild perfectionism in applying Amartya Sen's capability approach for an education transformative of student agency and well-being. Key to the paper is the significance of education as a process of being and becoming in the future, and education's fundamental objective of a positively changed human being. The capability approach therefore provides for additional reasons for investment in education beyond its human capital value. While the capability approach offers a radical freedom-focused approach to education, it is argued here that because it is an approach to human development and not a theory of educational development, it provides a thin account of education and how power and unfreedoms work in education. What is then appropriate in the specific case of education is neither Sen's reluctance to specify valuable capabilities, nor Nussbaum's canonical list of 10 universal capabilities, but a mild perfectionism which steers a path between these two approaches and yet is consistent with the core quality of life and well-being arguments of the capability approach. The argument proceeds through stages of outlining the capability approach and then exploring arguments around power, values and education as a public good, before arguing that capability pedagogical praxis as a practical expression of the theoretical ideas would inflect towards social justice in education. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]