Using the Capacity Approach to improve the sustainability of teacher inservice training 11 Other valued functionings that can affect the sustainability of EGR training

In addition to the occupational functionings that teachers value, it should be noted that there are additional functionings that should be acknowledged by EGR training interventions. For example, teachers are very anxious about the surveillance activities of inspectors and the power they wield in the education hierarchy. This foregrounds the implicit valued functioning of ‘following protocol’, which is valued not because it contributes to the working lives that teachers want, but because their livelihoods are threatened (via transfer or firing) if they don’t. The implications of this with regard to EGR training is that it should be aligned with teacher protocols; more specifically, any new strategies or activities must be aligned with the syllabus that teachers are inspected on. Otherwise, teachers will be reluctant to apply new strategies because they are not connected to the syllabus that they will be held account to.

In addition to this obligatory valued functioning that can affect EGR training, it is also important to note that teachers’ personal valued functionings should also be addressed in a corresponding intervention. For example, constraint on personal valued functionings (such as being able to take care of family, being able to live in a satisfactory home, being healthy and being respected) often leads to lack of focus, lack of preparation and absenteeism, which can indeed affect EGR training. Thus, other interventions should aim to reduce constraints by providing strategies that help teachers achieve these prioritised functionings. Generally speaking, these can include school-based saving groups, community-based solutions for housing, Teachers’ Union advocacy for improved health insurance and head teacher training on people management skills. Such activities can be packaged within broader Teacher Morale Strategies, whereby system actors (such as Head Teachers, School Committees, DEOs and REOs) are trained and mobilised for implementation.