Using the Capacity Approach to improve the sustainability of teacher inservice training 3 The Capability Approach conception of well-being

The Capability Approach (CA), developed by Amartya Sen, emerged as an intellectual response to various approaches traditionally used for the evaluation and measurement of well-being, as it critiqued the ‘information bases’ on which they were predicated (Sen 1999). For example, welfare economics utilised income as the information base for evaluation and although Sen (1992) acknowledged that income was an important resource for well-being, he argued that there were components of well-being that were not directly acquirable with income (such as being healthy, or being able to make choices). He argued that current spaces for evaluation did not account for the fact that different people attained different levels of well-being when given the same income or bundle of goods He suggested that instead of focusing on the means that might facilitate a good life, we should instead focus on the actual living that people manage to achieve; and more importantly, the freedom that people have to achieve the types of lives they want to lead (Sen 1999). This alternative view bore the information base of functionings, which are the ‘beings and doings’ that people have reason to value; and capabilities, which are the opportunities or substantive freedoms that people have for realising these functionings.

Capabilities can be both expanded or constrained by conversion factors, which can be delineated into personal conversion factors (such as intelligence, physical ability and skill sets); environmental conversion factors (such as geographical location, infrastructure and logistics); and social conversion factors (such as social norms and gender relations, roles and identities) (Robeyns 2005). If the conversion factors that block capability freedom can be reconciled, a person would then be judged to have an expanded capability, and her well-being would be evaluated either based on the capabilities she has available to her, or on the functionings that she chooses to realise (Sen 1999). Sen’s preferred view of well-being – as a product of the enhanced or constrained opportunities surrounding the beings and doings that people value – has provided a new way in which to understand well-being and, in particular, teachers’ well-being.

Given this conceptualisation, how can we assess teachers’ well-being in Tanzania? This would first involve understanding the functionings that teachers value most in their lives. Secondly, teachers then help to identify the constraints on their capabilities to achieve their valued functionings via conversion factors (environmental, social and personal). Finally, an evaluation of teachers’ well-being can be made by looking at the enhanced or constrained capabilities teachers have surrounding the functionings that they value. Moreover, a Critical Realist Theory of Causation (Bhaskar, 1978, 1979) can then be used to causally link constrained well-being to teachers’ ‘deficient’ or ‘negative’ practices and behaviours. Tao (2013) has argued that when located within a Critical Realist theory of causation, teachers’ valued functionings can be viewed as the causal mechanisms that generate much of their behaviour, and that various conditions of service (or conversion factors) constrain what teachers value being and doing. Teachers’ reflexive deliberation then determines whether they choose to comply with constraints (thereby not achieving their valued functionings), or whether to contend with them, which often leads to the production of certain ‘deficient’ behaviours, such as absenteeism, rural post avoidance and corporal punishment (Tao, 2013, 2014, 2015).

It should be noted that the aim of this exercise is not to reduce teacher behaviour to linear or simplistic components; rather, the aim is to provide a holistic view of what contributes to teachers’ empirical actions, and to demonstrate how a valued functioning is a major lever for teachers’ actions (as well as potential change). Moreover, locating the concepts of valued functionings, capabilities and conversion factors within CR’s theory of causation has provided explanatory potential to CA, whereby empirical behaviour can be causally linked to people’s valued functionings (or causal mechanisms) and contextual conditions (conversion factors). This can offer a potential counterpoint to the use of positivistic observations of teacher behaviour as proof of deficiency, as this framework problematises such assumptions by locating

Using the Capacity Approach to improve the sustainability of teacher inservice training teachers’ empirical actions within a deeper causal process. In a sense, this CA/CR lens provides a more complete story behind teachers’ criticised practices, which will not contest that these practices occur, but will allow us to see in a holistic and nuanced way why they occur.

The figure below outlines how Capability Approach concepts can be located within a Critical Realist Theory of Causation, as well as the causal links between teachers’ values, constraints and empirical actions.

Valued Functioning is the causal mechanism that guides behaviour Enabling conversion factors (allow valued functioning to be realised)

Decision by actor (to realise valued functioning)

Empirical event 1 Valued functioning is achieved

Empirical event 2 Valued functioning is not achieved

Constraining conversion factors (prevent valued functionings to be realised)

Decision by actor (to comply or contend with constraint)

Empirical event 3 Compliance with constraintfunctioning is not achieved

Empirical event 4 Contend with constraint - a constrained form of functioning is achieved