TY - CHAP AB - Abstract The human development and capability approach (HDCA) and its associated participatory method is receiving growing attention as a useful conceptual development for comparative international education. HDCA challenges the economism so prevalent in world development thinking and, instead, looks at development as a process of enhancing persons’ incrementally achieved substantive freedoms from deprivations. The centrality of the person replaces the centrality of income growth.The application of HDCA to the study of the role of education that promotes social justice change is illustrated by using an empowerment-capability framework to the long-term study of the benefits of village schooling for rural girls in western China.Using HDCA to identify influences on social change, we derive a much more nuanced and valuable multi-dimensional view of human development, which enables us to draw broad implications for more effective policy. National policies should use a multi-dimensional informational base including equality, sustainability, and non-market dimensions of well-being as well as market production. VL - 39 SN - 978-1-83867-724-4, 978-1-83867-723-7/1479-3679 DO - 10.1108/S1479-367920200000039012 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/S1479-367920200000039012 AU - Seeberg Vilma ED - Alexander W. Wiseman PY - 2020 Y1 - 2020/01/01 TI - Human Development and Capability Approach: A Contribution to the Study of Comparative and International Education T2 - Annual Review of Comparative and International Education 2019 T3 - International Perspectives on Education and Society PB - Emerald Publishing Limited SP - 89 EP - 110 Y2 - 2024/03/28 ER -