1 TheneedforEarlyGradeReading teachertrainingin Tanzania

There is broad consensus in the education community that reading is a fundamental skill that children must master to succeed in their academic and professional careers. However, recent national assessments in Tanzania show that 60% of Standard 7 students are not able to read or count at a Standard 2 level (Uwezo, 2011), and 40% of Standard 2 students scored zero in reading comprehension (National Baseline Assessment for 3Rs, 2014). Although many factors contribute such assessment scores, these results do suggest inadequacies in teachers’ knowledge of instructional practices, particularly with regard to foundational Early Grade Reading. In addition to this, poor pedagogy is another factor contributing to these learning deficits, with reports of teacher-centred methods that promote rote learning and recitation (Hardman et al., 2012). Moreover, low teacher morale is widespread (Bennell et al., 2005), and the working/living conditions that contribute to low morale have been directly linked with ‘deficient’ types of teacher practice and behaviour (Tao, 2013), such as absenteeism (approximately one in four teachers absent from school on any given day (AERC, 2013: 15)), corporal punishment (Feinstein and Mwahombela, 2010), and avoidance of rural posts (whereby teachers do not report to or stay at their schools (PEDP III, 2013: 22)).

Given these problems, this paper will explore a framework that can be used to underpin teacher in-service training in EGR that utilises teachers’ voices, values and lived experiences to understand why the abovementioned practices and behaviours occur; and to help develop strategies that will improve the efficacy of training. Such a framework would not only have the positive analytical and political effects of prioritising the knowledge, participation and empowerment of teachers; but it would also provide a more fine-grained understanding of the contextual constraints that teachers face. Given these aims, this paper will utilise the Capability Approach as it provides a very precise conceptualisation of well-being, as well as analytical tools to identify possible constraints on this. When combined with Critical Realism, causal links can be made between constrained well-being and teacher practice and behaviour. Thus, the next section will offer a brief sketch of these two approaches and how they can be used to deepen understandings of both teacher wellbeing and the efficacy of teacher in-service training in Tanzania.

2 TheCapabilityApproachconceptionof 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

Using the Capability Approach to improve the efficacy of teacher training

Dr. Sharon Tao

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 evaluate teachers’ well-being in Tanzania? This would first involve understanding the functionings that teachers value most in their lives. Secondly, it would then involve identifying the enhancements or constraints on teachers’ 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 overall enhanced or constrained capabilities teachers have surrounding the functionings that they value. Moreover, a Critical Realist Theory of Causation (Bhaskar, 1978, 1979) can be used to causally link constrained well-being to certain classroom 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 (Tao, 2013), rural post avoidance (Tao, 2014) and corporal punishment (Tao, 2015).

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

Valued Functioning Causal mechanism that guides behaviour

Enabling conversion factors (allow valued functioning to be realised)

Constraining conversion factors (prevent valued functioningsto be realised)

Decision by actor (to realise valued functioning)

Empirical event 1

Valued functioning is achieved

Empirical event 2

Valued functioning is not achieved

Decision by actor (to comply or contend with constraint)

Empirical event 3

Compliance with constraint -functioning is not achieved

Empirical event 4

Contend with constraint -a constrained form of functioning is achieved