Search results

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.

The capability approach is a normative framework that seeks to evaluate the quality of life through the evaluation of individual freedoms. It is behind the Human Development Index and it is increasingly applied in educational research, mostly in topics related to inequalities and curriculum development. This chapter provides an overview of the use of the capability approach in higher education. It first outlines its two versions, the evaluative version of Sen and the relational version of Nussbaum, arguing their complementary nature. Second, it points out its major critiques, namely the difficulties in its operationalisation. Finally, it reviews some examples of its application in higher education research, focusing mostly in Western-based contributions.

There has been limited research to date that takes account of marginalized migrants’ educational aspirations in the Global South using a human development lens. There is thus a need to consider where aspirations and education fit into processes of development among and for youth, particularly in the South-to-South migration context. This chapter conceptualizes the formation of educational aspirations among marginalized migrant youth. The emphasis is on higher education, with a focus on educational aspirations, because of the importance of higher education for both intrinsic and instrumental development of individuals in equipping them for multiple futures. Using the human development and capability lens for analysis, we argue that to understand educational aspirations we need to take account of material resources as well as the interaction between individual agency and structural conditions. The chapter argues that the formation of higher educational aspirations is complex, as is the environment that shapes them. Such a complexity requires an in-depth and comprehensive analysis to take account of the lived realities of marginalized groups.

Economic theory posits that production factors that are both difficult to imitate and capable of creating organizational efficiencies can generate economic rents and sustain long-term competitive advantage. Using survey data for 106 firms, we measure four dimensions of strategic human capital and find that the market values strategic human capital that has the capability to create efficiencies in the organization and is also difficult for competitors to imitate. We discuss implications for the reporting of human capital in intellectual capital reports and offer suggestions for future research.

This paper explores and elaborates on emotions and capability in organizations through the phenomenon of care. Drawing upon multi-disciplinary theory, as well as empirical material from a case study in the hotel industry (involving four organizations), a theoretical framework is offered for understanding the multidimensional, dynamic, social relational nature and role of care in organizations. This is shown through the suggestion of a conceptual framework of four ideal types of practices in frontline work. In the practice of care, emotions are one of the vital parts in a larger whole. Regarding the role of care in organizations, it is suggested that what, and how, one cares for, are continually created, tested, negotiated and/or re-constructed. This paper suggests that the claims regarding care also provide implications for the study and understanding of emotions and capability in organizations.

According to Nussbaum (2010), it is really important to develop responsibility and to promote the critical thinking, above all through pedagogical appropriate interventions. Education has to offer the instruments and pedagogical models useful to let people be able to participate actively to the building of a society taking into account the diversities and the resources deriving from them. One of these can be service-learning methodology where students learn and develop through active participation in thoughtfully organized service. Literature documents that service-learning activities enhanced students’ problem-solving abilities (Conrad & Hedin, 1982; Goldsmith, 1996) social competence (Osborne, Hammerich, & Hensley, 1998), civic responsibility (Goldsmith, 1996; Zeldin & Tarlov, 1997). Starting from this theoretical framework, this chapter will describe the results of a case study analysis on the relationship between the capability approach and service-learning in higher education. In particular, guided by the capability approach of Sen (1987) and Nussbaum (2000, 2010), a qualitative analysis was conducted on students’ reflections on their service-learning experience.

This chapter aims to investigate how a range of emerging trends within the international community can be used to build a connective educational ecosystem based on an inclusive and universal process (Biggeri et al., 2017; Ziegler, 2017). The starting question is: how multidisciplinary teams in Italy could take action toward inclusive education?

Partnering is becoming a central system organization strategy for schools to adopt for successful innovative teams with creative educational ideas (Kelly et al., 2002), and here it is declined in the Italian context in which inclusive education was officially embraced in 1977 as a national policy (D'Alessio, 2011). National legislation (104/92 Law) made explicit the mandate that students with disabilities receive their education (to the maximum extent possible) with nondisabled peers in the general education classroom using appropriate supplemental aids and services in the least-restrictive environment (Anastasiou et al., 2015; Canevaro & de Anna, 2010).

It is crucial to encourage new forms of practice which require collaboration capabilities (Hattie, 2015; Vangrieken et al., 2015) between multidisciplinary teams that comprised general teachers, special education teachers, health professionals, school psychologists, school leaders, and the students' family (Meirink et al., 2010). These resources could be distributed across inclusive ecosystems to support all students by enabling them to prosper in an increasingly diversified and complex environment in which creativity, ability to innovate, entrepreneurship, and a commitment to continuous learning are joint and connective (EU, 2008). This creates a state of positive multiagency collaboration that promotes the well-being of students and the system.

Development of intellectual capital, in conjunction with collaborative capabilities, is particularly important to continuously generating innovation. In the literature to date, the link between collaborative and intellectual capital, although key assets in knowledge-intensive industries, has rarely been investigated. This chapter introduces a model illustrating the interaction between human, intellectual, and structural capital, and their interplay. Several propositions are also derived in view of the need for companies to harness these three types of capital which are integral to implicit knowledge generation and leveraging the dynamic capabilities of the organization. As a consequence, team-based organizational forms are considered to be the most appropriate collaborative pattern for knowledge-intensive industries. This suggests that companies must increasingly focus on building valuable collaborative capital using flexible forms of organization in order to perpetuate successful product innovations.

This chapter will now focus on humanity’s response to the seismic contextual changes brought about by globalization at the cusp of the twenty-first century. The signature feature of this response is an enrollment explosion. Other features are four driving policyscapes (that aligned to capabilities theory, neo-liberal economics, the Creed of Human Rights, and social justice), education for sustainable development, managerialism, decentralization, Global, Citizenship Education, Multicultural and Intercultural education, Multilingualism and the rising importance of English as international lingua franca, Human Rights Education, from STEM to STEAM education and a reappreciation of the social sciences and the humanities, the divergent calls for relevance, new ways of production and packaging of knowledge, a shift from teaching to learning, new learning theories, and the rise of international testing regimes. In many ways, these responses are incomplete and still searching for the perfect fit in each context. It is in this regard where the value of Comparative and International Education comes to the fore.