by Gavin Moodie and Leesa Wheelahan

In 2015 in a blog for SRHE, Rajani Naidoo mentioned, almost in passing, the potential of the capability or capabilities approach to complement the wellbeing framework, which was the approach she advocated.  However, she did not elaborate the approach. Yet the capabilities approach is important for educational and general public policy, and has the potential to transform peoples’ agency. It has become increasingly important in the scholarly literature in all sectors of education.

The capabilities approach was developed by the economics Nobel laureate Amartya Sen and by the distinguished USA philosopher Martha Nussbaum. Sen argued that the aim of public policy should be ‘the expansion of the “capabilities” of persons to lead the kind of lives they value—and have reason to value’. Sen’s argument is that human capability is an alternative to utilitarianism, rights theories of justice, and to human capital theory. While the aim of human capital theory is to increase economic output which may benefit humans, the aim of capabilities is to increase peoples’ freedom, which requires economic resources, but importantly also other arrangements –

“At the risk of some oversimplification, it can be said that the literature on human capital tends to concentrate on the agency of human beings in augmenting production possibilities. The perspective of human capability focuses, on the other hand, on the ability — the substantive freedom — of people to lead the lives they have reason to value and to enhance the real choices they have. The two perspectives cannot be but related, since both are concerned with the role of human beings, and in particular with the actual abilities that they achieve and acquire.

But the yardstick of assessment concentrates on different achievements.”

As Belgian philosopher Ingrid Robeyns explained, the capability approach is a broad normative framework for evaluating and assessing individuals’ well-being and social arrangements, the design of policies, and proposals about social change in society. The capabilities approach is therefore not a list of desirable attributes that people may have, as is suggested by reductive and distorted presentations of the approach. It is not another term for competencies or for skills. It refers to the real freedom individuals have to pursue the things that matter to them, and to live a life they have reason to value, and to the social, economic, political, and the environmental resources and conditions that are needed to realise these opportunities. It is at its core, a relational approach that links individuals, their families and communities, with their society and asks about the social arrangements that are needed to support individuals to realise their aspirations.

Capabilities and functionings

The capabilities approach distinguishes between capabilities and functionings. Capabilities are people’s capacity to act, while functionings are the outcomes from people using their capabilities to achieve a particular goal. A complex set of capabilities provides individuals with the basis for making choices in their lives, whereas functionings are the outcomes they achieve when they exercise choice. A particular set of capabilities can produce any number of outcomes. Walker and Unterhalter explained that: “The difference between a capability and  functioning is one between an opportunity to achieve and the actual achievement, between potential and outcome”. Two people with similar capability sets may make choices that result in different functionings or outcomes. Capabilities cannot be regarded as isolated attributes or resources. Rather, they need to be understood as a ‘set’ or ensemble of interlocking capacities or potentials for action that allows people to make choices.

Agency

In addition to capabilities and functionings, a third key concept in the capabilities approach is agency. Agency is a person’s ability to pursue and realise goals that they value and have reason to value. People need agency to identify, value, and prioritise capabilities. For this Sen emphasised transparent scrutiny, general social discussion, and continued public reasoning. For Sen, capabilities are contingent on circumstances specific to their context and the purpose for which they are identified, and reflect the particular reality that any particular society faces.

The capabilities approach emphasises the importance of agency and distinguishes between different forms of agency, particularly between ensuring people have the freedom to choose how they will pursue their goals (process freedom) and the opportunities that are needed to realise their goals (opportunity freedom). However, it does not develop a full conception of the human agent, leaving this to different ‘capability theories’ and the uses towards which it is being put in different contexts.

We use the work of capability theorists, Bonvin and Laruffa, to think about human agency. They  draw on anthropology to argue that at the core of the capability approach is a conception of people as receivers (of support for vulnerable people, as we all are at different times of our lives), as doers (who are actors able to contribute to society), and as judges (who are political beings with aspirations, values and desires). Living a life that one has reason to value needs to incorporate all these aspects of our being, and allow us to fulfil multiple aspirations.

We also draw on the work of the late British sociologist and leading critical realist scholar Margaret Archer, who distinguished between individuals and social structures, arguing that each is different and irreducible to the other. She explained, for example, that individuals have the capacity for reflection and introspection, whereas societies have social structures and institutions. Archer argued that the self must simultaneously exist in the natural world, the practical world (for example, engaging in activities at work or at home) and the social world.

Archer argued that the way we mediate and navigate our way in each world is through our ‘internal conversation’, wherein we reflect, consider, make decisions, change our minds and so forth. She argued that the self is defined by the things that matter to us, including who and how we choose to love, and issues, problems or concerns such as these cannot always be reduced to self-interest. We build a social identity through our relational engagement with others and not just because of individual effort, even though our agency helps to shape the nature of this engagement.

This provides a foundation for considering human rights, the obligation that all of us have to each other and the social conditions that underpin civil and political life, which includes work, occupations, and the labour market. It also provides a basis for thinking about the purposes of education and the ways in which it can support human agency.

Conversion factors

Robeyns pointed out that a person’s capacity to convert resources into capabilities and thence functionings depends on three types of conversion factors: personal, social, and environmental.

Personal conversion factors may be relatively unchangeable such as being blind, or they may be more changeable such as not being able to read. Both of these conversion factors affect a person’s capability to read unless they are mediated in some way, such as braille or a text to voice conversion application for the person who is visually impaired, or literacy classes for the person who is not yet literate.

Thus, we see that personal conversion factors may be mediated by social conversion factors. These examples also illustrate that social policies should reflect people’s diversity to ensure that everyone has access to the social resources they need to participate fully in society and to achieve their aspirations. People’s capabilities are also influenced by other social conversion factors such as ‘public policies, social norms, discriminating practises, gender roles, societal hierarchies, power relations’.

The third type of conversion factors is environmental, such as geography, infrastructure, and climate. While most discussion is of the capabilities of individuals, we argue that it is also necessary to consider the capabilities of groups and the collective capability of society.

Broader resources

Capabilities therefore rest upon broader social, economic, cultural and technological resources. For example, people need to have the language, literacy and mathematical skills for engaging and progressing in study and work. They need to have access to the social and economic resources that facilitate their participation in study and work, such as the necessary housing, healthcare, transport and childcare, and enable their participation in civic society and in their communities.

People also need to have the knowledge, skills and attributes required to navigate, negotiate and engage in these aspects of life and in work as the capacity to be skillful in both emerges from broader knowledge, skills and attributes.

Application to education

As Sen and Nussbaum elaborated, clearly education is fundamental to expanding peoples’ capacity to understand and act in the world and thus lead the kind of lives they value and have reason to value. The capabilities approach has therefore been applied to education, and more recently to vocational education, as we elaborated in our open access book and as is explored briefly in our subsequent SRHE Blogs.

Dr Gavin Moodie is Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Department of Education

Leesa Wheelahan is Professor Emerita and William G. Davis Chair in Community College Leadership Emerita at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Oxford’s Department of Education.