Conclusion: Capabilities, Social Justice, and Education

Abstract

The chapters in this collection have considered how the capability approach helps us to think about some key issues in education and schooling. While there are similarities with the perspective on education associated with the capability approach and other views of education linked to Aristotelian notions of human flourishing, what is new about the capability approach is that it combines a normative idea with consideration of how to link this with practice not just in education but in a wide range of political, economic, and social fields that bear on education. Thus, for example, utilizing the capability approach in education illuminates thinking about questions of justice and the distribution of schooling, gender equality, redressing poverty, politics, the link between school and the labor market, policymaking, education measurement, institution building, management, and pedagogies. It has been used to address specific questions in schools, the problems of regional and national policymaking, and issues about global relations. It combines well-articulated philosophical underpinnings with a versatile range of applications. However, as many of the chapters conclude, work on the capability approach in education is just beginning and a very wide range of issues are unexamined. There are also a number of areas where the capability approach is problematic and critical discussion is still required. In concluding this book we want to highlight how some of these might be taken forward by researchers and practitioners in education and those working more generally on the capability approach.