Using the Capability Approach to improve the efficacy of teacher training

Dr. Sharon Tao

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 a broader Teacher Morale intervention, whereby system actors (such as Head Teachers, School Committees, DEOs and REOs) are trained and mobilised for implementation of these strategies that reduce constraint.

8 Conclusion

This paper has presented a CA/CR framework for strengthening the efficacy of EGR teacher training, which entails seeking teachers’ participation to identify their valued functionings and constraining conversion factors, and then designing in-service training that not only provides the knowledge and skills for effective EGR instruction, but also aims to address constraints. This is predicated on the hypothesis that if training is guided by teachers’ values and by reducing constraint, their acceptance, adoption and assimilation of EGR practices will be strengthened.

This process of EGR teacher training development is by no means a guaranteed silver bullet solution; what it does do however, is place teachers’ well-being at the fore of training strategies, and also sees the levers of behaviour change being deeply rooted in their values and lived experiences. Given these benefits, it should be noted that use of the Capability Approach also has its limits. The approach does not account for shifts in individuals’ values and decisions over time. For example, a new teacher may not initially value ‘taking care of family’, but over the course of her career, this may change with the birth of children, as well as recede after her children grow older (which was indeed demonstrated across the age range of teachers in this study). In a similar vein, shifts in conversion factors over time can also occur. Thus, in order to be more responsive to the fluidity of people's values and corresponding conversion factors, it may be necessary to plan for data collection and analysis during the course of training implementation, in order adjust and fine tune solutions to changing value sets.

It should also be noted that this framework for EGR training development can be generalised – not at an individual level of preference or experience – but at a meta-level with regard to the components that generate behaviour. Clearly, teachers’ values and constraints vary over population and context, however at a theoretical level, it is possible to generalise about the fact that a valued functioning acts as a causal mechanism that guides behaviour, conversion factors can act to constrain it, and the interaction of these can result in certain classroom actions. Given this understanding, it is imperative that an EGR training intervention acknowledges the importance of these meta-level components in order to ensure the efficacy of training.

Overall, this paper has argued that without acknowledgement of these components of behaviour –teachers’ valued functionings and constraints – it is unlikely that new EGR instructional practices will be sustained, as teachers will revert to their ‘old ways’ which are grounded in the valued functionings that consistently generate much of their behaviour. The benefit of reframing teachers’ classroom actions in this manner is that it provides a theoretically grounded account of teacher behaviour that is situated in their values and contexts. Such an account not only fosters detailed explanations of teacher performance; but it hopefully engenders more nuanced and creative strategies aimed at improvements.