Using the Capacity Approach to improve the sustainability of teacher inservice training 5 Findings: What Tanzanian teachers value

The table below presents the six most salient functionings gleaned from discussions with teachers and the questionnaires completed at the three schools. These functionings included:

1) Being able to live in a satisfactory home; 2) Being able to take care of family; 3) Being healthy; 4) Being able to help students learn; 5) Being able to participate in training (and upgrade qualifications); and 6) Being respected. The table provides an overall view of how many teachers discussed (without prompting) each of the functionings during focus groups and interviews (which are demarcated with ‘D’), and how many teachers ranked these within the top five (of a list of 53 pre-defined capabilities) on questionnaires (which is demarcated with ‘Q’). It should also be noted that some functionings were constitutive of broader functionings, and were thus included in this broader tally, for example, discussions of ‘being able to live in a safe place’ were included in the overarching functioning of ‘being able to live in a satisfactory home’, and ‘being able to drink clean water’ was considered to be part of ‘being healthy’. That said, although the salience of a functioning was determined by characteristics such as presence and frequency, greater importance was placed on the intensity of discussion because it was found that focusing on frequency was misleading, as many teachers (particularly in focus groups) tacitly agreed with functionings and topics through non-verbal nods and gestures.

D: # of teachers who spontaneously discussed this topic at length in focus groups and interviews

Q: # of teachers who ranked this functioning highly (within the top 5) in a list of 53

In addition to the focus groups and questionnaires that were used to determine valued functionings, followup interviews were conducted to investigate the constraining conversion factors that teachers also experienced. These discussions were also significant as teachers’ empirical behaviours are very much predicated on how and to what extent they decide to comply or contend with these constraints.