Utilizing the Capability Approach to Improve Teacher Quality in Tanzania

• In Event: Poster Session 15
  In Poster Session: Professional Identity in Global Contexts

Abstract

Tanzanian teachers are often positioned as either the cause of poor education quality, as evidenced in absenteeism, rote-teaching, and withholding content; or the victims of a flawed system, as demonstrated through impoverished working and living conditions. This paper aims to draw these polarised views together by utilising the Capability Approach and a Critical Realist theory of causation to investigate the relationship between teachers’ working conditions and their criticised behaviours. This new analytical framework, which will be contextualised with qualitative data collected from three Tanzanian primary schools, will reframe teachers’ ‘deficient’ behaviours as a product of their constrained capabilities; by doing so, a more nuanced investigation into teacher performance might be had, which may enhance practice and policy aimed at improving it.

Author

• Sharon Tao, Institute of Education - University of London