Teacher Quality and Capability Approach: An Analysis of Female Teacher Experience in a Rural, Malawian Community

• In Event: Publication mentoring workshop session
  In Special Session: Professional Development & Learning

Proposal

Malawi and other sub-Saharan African countries have recently experienced success in raising the level of access to primary education, and simultaneously the region has encountered another significant challenge of low educational outcomes as evidenced through student achievement scores (Dembele & Miaro-II, 2013). As efforts to enroll more students in primary school succeeded, class sizes grew significantly and previously sparse resources such as classrooms, learning materials, and qualified teachers became even more so. Attention to the real, not idealized, context in which teachers in developing countries operate is essential in understanding how to approach improving teacher quality and student learning outcomes (Bird, Moon, and Storey, 2013).
Building understanding of the practices, motivations, and challenges of female teachers working in rural settings is crucial to continuous improvement of teacher preparation efforts, teaching quality, and student learning. Buckler (2015) and Yates (2007) suggested the application of the capability approach to understanding educational and teacher quality by focusing on the agency teachers have to be and do what they value within the context of their daily work. Sen’s (1999) capability approach provides a framework to understand both what is valued and the degree to which what is valued can be pursued.
The purpose of this study was to use the capability approach to describe and analyze teacher quality in a rural community in central Malawi. This study used the capability approach as a lens to understand teacher quality from both the perspective of educational leaders and practicing teachers. The overarching question of this research study was “How can the capability approach inform our understanding of teacher quality from both the perspective of educational leaders and practicing teachers?” The focus questions to guide this research were as follows:
“What is the official understanding of teacher quality in Malawi?”
“What do the Malawian educational leaders value regarding teacher quality?”
“What do female teachers in this rural Malawian community value in their teaching?”
“To what degree do female teachers in this rural community believe they are able to pursue and achieve the valued aspects of teaching?”
This study included data collection and analysis of two specific contexts: the official context of educational leadership and educational policy in Malawi and the teacher context of daily life working in a rural school in Malawi. Both contexts were necessary to address the research questions at hand. This research was situated in Malawi because of the rural nature of the majority of the nation and the need for more female teachers in rural communities in the country align with the research questions posed.
The official context was concerned with the larger field of educational policy that impacts education in rural Malawian communities. This research was not focused on the impact of any one specific policy, but rather in understanding the values and capabilities that are important within the holistic body of education policies. This data was collected through document review and semi-structured interviews with educational leaders at primary schools, secondary schools, school zone leaders, and teacher training college staff. Additional data about the official context was collected via review of documents regarding the official understanding of quality teaching. Documents included in the review range from teacher expectations as posted at various school sites, school improvement initiatives, teacher guidance documents, teacher observation rubrics, and guidelines for national educational programming.
The research site for investigating the teacher context was a rural community in the central region of Malawi. Data collected at this site was used to inform research questions three and four. Local community leaders who agreed to act as gatekeepers for this study and the head teachers at each school site were instrumental in recruiting teacher participants with the criteria that the head teacher views the teacher participant as typical for the school, the teacher is proficient in written and spoken English, and the teachers teaches classes in English for at least one period a day. Participants were drawn from four school sites within the a single school zone.
The discussion and analysis of the data collected in both research contexts includes the values of teacher participants, the ability of the teachers to achieve their valued functionings, common constraints experienced by teachers, as well as comparison of the valued functions of teachers a to the valued teacher functions defined by official documents and educational leaders. The findings from this research include policy recommendations regarding teacher quality and thoughts on the further application of the capability approach to understanding teacher quality.

At the time of the CIES conference, the author of this work will have just graduated from a doctoral program in educational leadership and policy analysis.

Author

• Annabelle Rodgers Hardy, E Tennessee State University