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European Journal of Education, Vol. 47, No. 3, 2012

Universities and a Human Development Ethics: a capabilities approach to curriculum

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Melanie Walker Our campuses are producing citizens, and this means we should ask what good citizen of the present day should be and should know. (Nussbaum, 1997, p. 8) The captive bird said with a sigh Ive lost the strength to y! (Rabindrath Tagore, The Two Birds, quoted in Alam, F. & Chakravarty, 2011, p. 231) Introduction Writing recently in the New York Review of Books, Peter Brooks (2011) described the university as a precious and fragile institution committed to the disinterested pursuit and transmission of knowledge and one of the best things we have got. Universities often fail, says Brooks, and need reform, but they are not at their best, merely venal and self-serving. Universities, uniquely in society, combine a number of functions scholars and scientists, the education of professionals, general education and the formation of enlightened citizens (Habermas, 1989). They are arguably still places, as Habermas (1989) argues, for the lifeworld to ourish against the colonising effects of the system (money and power). We also, including in universities, confront challenges of tremendous global inequalities, environmental sustainability, cultural and political conict, and differences in the modern world. In contemporary times, the knowledge function of universities is regarded by policy makers as increasingly central for wealth generation, so that access to knowledge and its production has become the source of competitive economic advantage in the context of globalisation. But knowledge can equally be a driver of social progress (Taylor, 2008). By doing particular kinds of educational things, universities can educate particular kinds of graduates who are able to respond creatively and ethically to contemporary challenges. There appears thus to be two broad development possibilities in terms of how we produce and use knowledge. On the one hand, there is the central focus on knowledge as a commodity, on technology and innovation as the human capital engine for knowledge-based economies in Europe (Maassen & Stensaker, 2010), with universities servicing the market place and the economy. On the other, there is the possibility that economic development advanced through higher education , while important, would combine knowledge with wisdom and be a way to good lives, but not an end in itself (Nussbaum, 2010). Rather, the question would be what contribution can a university education make to building a more just society with human dignity (Nussbaum, 2000) and well-being for all (Sen, 1999). How then ought publiclyfunded universities contribute to social and human development, and, in the light of their core knowledge function, what are the contemporary policy drivers and what implications follow for curriculum design and curriculum in action? More specically, given the core knowledge production and dissemination functions of
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universities, what curriculum logic and what knowledge would entail a different kind of development ethics and a different view of what it means to be human? I situate my argument in a context of universities as a public good and a ght for the denition of university which includes the possibility of expansive, transformative higher education (Boni & Gasper, 2009; GUNI, 2008, 2009), while offering a cautionary note regarding where reductive human capital policy and thin market exchange norms might direct us. I propose that a human development ethics (Haq, 2003), operationalised through the human capability approach (Sen, 1992, 1999; Nussbaum, 2000), expands our conceptual language, thereby offering guidance for transformative curriculum development and the graduate achievements that ought to have priority in addressing the incommensurable goods, but also the virtuous circle (Ranis et al., 2000), of advancing the economy and creating ourishing lives. Curriculum in Higher Education Curriculum foregrounds knowledge and how it is selected and mediated pedagogically and acquired by learners. Put more simply, it frames what counts as valid knowledge and, more widely, the range of formal learning opportunities available to students (Quicke, 2000). Importantly, statements about what should be included in a curriculum exemplify what powerful groups in a society think students should learn and thereby promote their particular identities (Thomson, 1999). A curriculum is thus always grounded in a moral perspective on what version of the good life is desirable. A curriculum encapsulates value judgements about what kinds of knowledge are considered important, for example the ethical dimensions of biotechnology advances, or the equal importance of exposure to arts and science for all students, or the literatures that are studied. But a curriculum further indicates with what attitudes and values students are expected to emerge in respect of the knowledge and skills they have acquired, e.g. the uses of scientic knowledge or historical understanding. As such, curriculum is a statement of intent, but there may be practical gaps between the aims of those constructing the curriculum and implementing it and what is actually learned by the students who experience the curriculum. Moreover, knowledge carried by a curriculum has signicant effects and projects into anticipating and preparing for the future and future persons (Young, 2010). Debates, conict and disagreements about curriculum are cultural, social and political (Karseth, 2006), turning on knowledge (what is worthwhile, what to put in, what to leave out, how to structure a programme, to whom it is distributed, who decides, etc.), and directly affect learning opportunities. Curriculum has wider consequences for how knowledge (carried by individual graduates) is distributed in society (Young, 2010, p. 19) and has an instrumental role in making a particular form of society (Ibid p. 21). As knowledge has moved up the policy agenda, curriculum seems also to have come to the fore. There has been a major overhaul of the undergraduate curriculum at the universities of Aberdeen and Southampton, Hong Kong, Melbourne and Macquarie to take just a few examples with more UK universities to follow aimed at changing practices and graduate outcomes with 21st century futures demands in mind. However, what change entails in each case does not necessarily differ from dominant human capital policy and may well even aim at a closer alignment with reductive discourses of employability and well paid global citizens in a global workforce. For example, current
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450 European Journal of Education public policy in the UK is reected in internationalising the curriculum or linking it directly to employability.The Bologna Process is arguably orientated in the same direction. For example, the case study by Boni et al. (2009) highlights the difculties and power imbalances in curriculum design at degree level in the European Higher Education Area. In the light of the central role of knowledge, it is surprising that relatively little attention has been paid to curriculum in higher education (Barnett & Coate, 2005) and even less to debates around curriculum development informed by alternative perspectives on knowledge, power and graduate outcomes (see Taylor, 2008 for examples and Nussbaums 1997 detailed study of liberal arts education in the US). Where curriculum in higher education is studied, it tends to focus on the contestations between a discipline-based model and a vocation or professional model and how these are being challenged by a market-led discourse emphasising exibility, mobility and employability (Karseth, 2006; Young, 2010) and/or policy convergences, such as Bologna in Europe (Karseth, 2005). A version of this debate is analysed by Ensor (2004) for South Africa in her identication of two key curriculum discourses driving change: a disciplinary discourse and what she describes as a credit accumulation and transfer discourse located in the market-led model pressures of globalisation and local reform initiatives in higher education. Similarly, in their comparative study of Indonesia, Nicaragua and Vietnam, Mason et al. (2001) argue that credits and curriculum measures in higher education are linked to market-driven economic systems. In general, disciplinary discourses emerge as having power, but this is being eroded by interdisciplinary approaches on the one hand and market-led public policy and discourses of exibility and employability on the other (Mason et al., 2001), with the effect that instrumental aims are claimed to be overtaking the intrinsic goods of knowledge, curriculum and learning. There are also studies which attempt to bring knowledge back in (Young, 2010) and the possible selves (Clegg, 2011) that curriculum enables. Barnett (2009) has more recently written about curriculum and the links between knowledge and student being and becoming. Clegg (2011) connects curriculum, context independent, socially powerful knowledge, social class and widening access, raising the problem of reducing knowledge to social positions and thereby ironically constraining the identities produced for disadvantaged individuals and groups. Meanwhile, there is an especially robust study of curriculum in South Africa (see Shay, 2011 for cited papers), linked in part to the policy concern regarding epistemological transformation (Shay, 2011), but also to an older tradition inuenced by the apartheid past of university researchers, paying attention to what curriculum knowledge can do to entrench or transform power relations, and who gets to limit or enable or dene socially powerful identities and agents (NEPI, 1993). More unusually, Taylor (2008) considers higher education curricula for human and social development which seek to improve lives, and, while highlighting examples of innovation and changing curriculum, he also suggests that this approach is not widely held, and even in Taylors case appears somewhat undertheorised. Curriculum and Sustainable Change University students will partly form their understanding of society through the curriculum knowledge and narratives made available to them (Thomson, 1999).
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For example, one history student at an lite English university who was interviewed for a research project on selected subjects and capability formation said that her course had made me reassess my prejudices because thats your judgements and your prejudices very much characterise the way you deal with the world and deal with people, read things, interpret things, things like that and by having to look at that and those being challenged . . . its made me more aware of the way I look at the world (quoted in Walker 2008, p. 39). Another student on the same course said of her study of Southern Africa that she would continue to be compassionate and have a role and relationship with Southern Africa. . . . I have learned that thats important to me. . . . Its been an awakening to what Im interested in (Ibid, p. 42). These are examples of how a well-taught subject curriculum enables young people to re-evaluate their goals in life and grow as human beings. Rather crucially, a focus on curriculum offers the possibility of more sustainable change than the more usual higher education focus on teaching and learning where so much rests on the individual lecturers. In the case of curriculum reform, the more powerful combination of curriculum structures (which are institutionally embedded and persist over time) and individual efforts aligned with these and evaluated against them point to embedded changes over time. Thus, attention to curriculum as a university-wide project holds considerable and sustainable transformative potential and the possibility of inclusively mobilising a university community through public reasoning (Sen, 2009) about worthwhile education, provided that a critical, human development perspective (Sens impartial spectator) on higher education purposes and policy is also kept in view. Arguably, curriculum reform and change should be in the direction of human development if we are to have some hope of addressing the moral urgencies (Habermas, 1989) that confront us all. Higher Education and Human Development Goals: capital or capabilities? While there is no space here to explore the range of curriculum debates noted above, I do wish to focus on the space to work contestations around knowledge and identities formation signalled by the brief examples above. I draw on principles shaped by human development (Haq, 2003) and capabilities (Sen, 1992, 1999, 2009; Nussbaum 2000, 2011) to connect knowledge and identities and functioning capabilities (Sen, 1999) to judgements about what is to be done with regard to curriculum, which, in turn is based on a normative view of what it means to be human and hence the trade-offs between economic growth and the quality of human lives. It is worth restating that universities play a special role in society through their core activities of advancing knowledge and scholarship and educating students and professionals. Habermas (1989) argues that they constitute a space for the lifeworld to ourish against the colonising effects of the system (money and power) which distort communicative rationality. Universities have not departed from the horizon of the lifeworld or left behind the moral-political liabilities of the age. The Talloires Declaration (2005) (www.tufts.edu/talloiresnetwork) stresses the civic and social roles of universities with hundreds of signatories from across the globe. GUNI (2008; 2009) describes the new dynamics of social responsibility for universities. Yet, in contemporary times, higher education is most commonly
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452 European Journal of Education presented as the key arena for changing a country into a competitive knowledgebased economy, capable of combining economic growth and better jobs with greater social cohesion. However, where policy is strongly oriented only towards human capital and economic growth outcomes, as in England, any reconciliation often seems unattainable. Martha Nussbaum (2010) describes this as the insatiable thirst for economic growth and human capital outcomes driving education policy worldwide. Reconciling the incommensurable goods of economy and social sustainability economic growth with human ourishing is rather more difcult in our universities. Human capital as the dominant driver of higher education policy comprises the idea that a university education is instrumentally a means to something else (Keeley, 2007). Decontextualised individuals are assumed to invest rationally in themselves to improve their economic returns through a promotion or better earnings. Extra time spent in university education is supposed to pay off with higher earnings. Better educated countries also tend to be or become wealthier, further reinforcing the link between the economy and education (Ibid). So long as economic growth is proceeding, the problem of an uneven distribution of human capital and labour market opportunities (for women, migrants, the disabled, etc.) would not arise; economic development is prioritised as an end in itself over social inclusion. It is assumed that other improvements will follow, so that in the rst instance economic growth is traded off against quality of life and put forward as the dominant normative framework for development. Other activities such as higher education are justied insofar as they foster growth. But, let us be clear, human capital remains philosophically and normatively wedded to seeing people rst and foremost as the means to an end of economic productivity so that students are educated to be economic producers, consumer-citizens and entrepreneurial selves. This is what human means in this policy model. Yet the links between economic growth and human development are not automatic: even where there is high economic growth, valuable lives can prove elusive. According to OECD (2008), the gap between rich and poor in most OECD countries has widened over the past two decades; the scale of the change is moderate but signicant (Ibid p. 8) and it is going in the wrong direction. The awed assumption that economic growth can be sustained without concern for human ourishing is challenged by Alkire and Deneulin (2009) who ask the most important question: why does the basic intuition that human concerns should be the ultimate goal of economic activity continue to be ignored in policy all over the world? It is not that human capital is a bad goal for universities: fair economic opportunities, a productive business environment, and reducing human insecurity are central to well-being. Integration into economic life matters if people are to participate fully in income generation and securing remunerative employment. But income alone cannot capture the full range of contributions to a state of well-being in a persons life (Sen, 1999). We arguably need a richer set of goals and aims for university education beyond the venal and self-serving and a curriculum which imagines ethically inclusive and humanly rich goals for development, with close attention to the practical effects of higher education on the lives of human beings. Amartya Sens (1999) capability approach and its further development by Martha Nussbaum (2000, 2011) offer an attractive normative approach by subsuming human capital within an approach which values human well-being, and where each person is an
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end in herself or himself and not the means to some other end. University education can contribute to what Sen (1999) calls functionings, (achievements) those valuable beings and doings which enable us to choose and live in ways we nd meaningful, productive and rewarding individually and collectively for the good of society. Capabilities for Sen are the somewhat abstract freedoms, potentials or attainable life-paths for an individual to achieve valuable functioning; so that the capability set gives us information on the various functioning vectors that are within reach of a person (Sen, 1992, pp. 4142). Functionings are constitutive of a persons well-being and quality of life and their absence suggests ill-being and disadvantage. Sen (2009) rmly rejects the view that better lives can only follow from economic growth there is a range of valued human ends so that being a better producer is not the only evaluative end for human lives; the key purpose of development, he argues, is human development. Income and economy would still matter, but the purpose of educational development would be to enlarge all worthwhile human choices. Nussbaum (2011) additionally explicitly foregrounds the value of human dignity. For Nussbaum (2000, 2011) capabilities are opportunities for thinking about curriculum, and personal powers. She advances a thicker personhood than Sen arguably does with her list of ten central universal capabilities which provide some content to the abstract notion of capability (see Gasper, 2002 for this debate). Nussbaums (2000) human beings experience emotions, value friendship, respect others, reason about their own good lives, are imaginative and playful, etc. These personal powers (capabilities) can be formed through education to be knowledgeable, to use ones knowledge in worthwhile ways, to be interculturally aware and sensitive, etc. Nussbaum is therefore educationally helpful even if one does not agree with her priorities in that she requires that we ask what people are actually able to do and be. What opportunities do they have to attend a university, be healthy, creative, etc.? We would further have to ask how capabilities are distributed and to whom and why if inclusion and social justice matter. If we make capabilities and functionings central to curriculum we shift the axis of analysis to establishing and evaluating the political, social, economic and education conditions that enable individuals to take informed decisions, based on what they have reason to value. The education goal would be to provide the curriculum and pedagogical conditions for graduates capabilities to be developed, even though how these are exercised would then depend on individuals choices. Thus, Nussbaum (2000, p. 88) writes that once the stage is fully set, the choice is up to them. The language of capability is morally nourishing and deserves protection and promotion (Gasper, 2002, p. 448). Notwithstanding Nussbaum and Sens emphasis on capability, it is nonetheless in the realm of functionings how people actually spend their lives for our purposes in and through their university education that we assess progress in human development; not just what our students choose to be and do, but at least during their university years what they actually do and are (Walker, 2006). For universities, the issue would be to enable the formation of dignied relationships, social cohesion and public good values what one is choosing between is important and curriculum might form the appropriate commitments and values that are enriching and fullling for the individual at university and beyond and for society. Moreover, if democracy requires conviction, it is then the role of education and curriculum to help people to arrive at their own convictions
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454 European Journal of Education (Tawney, 1966).Being human in this model involves a life of full human ourishing and dignity to choose a good life with well-being and agency. Implications The kind of education that forms capabilities is, for Sen (Dreze & Sen, 1995), rich and thick and has multi-dimensional instrumental and intrinsic value and transformative potential. Crucially, having education affects the development and expansion of other capabilities so that an education capability expands other important human freedoms. However, a capabilities approach to curriculum ought to be embedded within the human development theory and its associated development dimensions in order to anchor interpretations and operationalisations of the capability approach which are transformative. The dimensions are: i) empowerment and participation in the expansion of capabilities; ii) equity in opportunities to form capabilities; iii) sustainability of opportunities to freely exercise ones capabilities; iv) community membership belonging; and v) human security [the protection of individuals from a range of threats to their well-being] (Gasper, 2002). Crucially, human development is concerned that all should have the opportunity and means to live long, creative and fullling lives so that these dimensions operationalise an inclusive and public good interest in educational aims and decisions and offer important guidance as to which capabilities might be centrally created through curriculum if, as argued, these ve dimensions are prioritised and valuable. Implications for Teaching, Learning and Assessment A curriculum inuenced by human development and capabilities would make selections from knowledge and then teach it to students; we would hope for an alignment of curriculum aims and pedagogy so that the curriculum-in-action process also fosters human development and university education as the practice of freedom (Freire, 1970). Sen (2009) gives some indirect curriculum and pedagogical guidance in that he ascribes a central role to our powers of public reasoning as a moral and political imperative.The advancement of justice depends on democracy deepening democracy depends on discussion and collective reasoning that inject more information and knowledge, diverse perspectives and plural voices into debates. For Sen, justice and democracy have shared discursive features (2009, p. 326). This process of public reasoning enables continuous scrutiny and assessments about how a society (or university) and its members are doing through open debate, including about values and principles and the curriculum. Understanding the demands of justice is not a solitary exercise: When we try to assess how we should behave, and what kind of societies should be understood to be patently unjust, we have reason to listen and pay some attention to the views and suggestions of others (Sen, 2009, p. 88). Clearly, universities as places which claim to develop critical and communicative reasoning ought to play a key role in forming public reasoning capabilities. Critical inquiry/discussion practices would therefore characterise a pedagogy which produces justice or at least reduces injustice, for example by training graduates with critical knowledge and self-reection and the capacity to act in the world. This learning process similar to what Habermas (1989) calls argumentation is connected to healthy democracies and what universities should do. Curriculum and pedagogies of implementation are then central to how such
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directions might be followed. Open, critical and scholarly discussion in universities is essential to this education project. It constitutes a human world, and it is itself educative. . . . Discussion is the principal way in which humanity is cultivated (Morrow, 2009, p. 10). As Nussbaum (1997, p. 12)) in her account of Billy Tuckers philosophy course explains, Billys teacher, Krishna Mallick, had developed a course with a strong emphasis on Socratic argumentation, but taught in such a way that she was able to have students interested in such apparently boring phenomena as detecting fallacies and formalizing arguments so that Billy really like[d] this philosophy . . . they want you to think and ask questions (Ibid p. 5). Aligned with critical forms of pedagogy, students would be active participants and co-constructors of knowledge, learning would be meaningful to the students and would have a critical focus (Walker, 2010). Nussbaum has written extensively on the specicity of education, while education is implicit and explicit in the development of her ten universal human capabilities. For example, her capability of senses, imagination and thought is dened in this rich way: Being able to use the senses to imagine, think and reason and to do these things in a truly human way, a way informed and cultivated by an adequate education, including but by no means limited to literacy and basic mathematical and scientic training. Being able to use imagination and thought in connection with experiencing and producing self-expressing works and events of ones own choice, religious, literary, musical and so forth. Being able to use ones mind in ways protected by guarantees of freedom of expression with respect to both political and artistic speech, and freedom of religious exercise. Being able to search for the ultimate meaning of life in ones own way. Being able to have pleasurable experiences and to avoid non-necessary pain (2000, pp. 7879). More specically, Nussbaum (1997) identied three education capabilities for both quality in education and the formation of democratic citizens. Her rst is a focus on the examined life, which involves the capacity for self-awareness and autonomy developed through searching (thick) critical thinking in which one asks what do I want to stand for and for what am I personally accountable?, exposing these questions to scrutiny, evidence and argument. Students learn to deal with differences among themselves and their disagreements; they take responsibility for their reasoning and debate ideas with others in an atmosphere of mutual respect for reason. Second is the ability to see oneself as a world citizen. Nussbaums global citizens are bound not only to a local community, but are interconnected to distant others by ties of equal dignity and genuine curiosity about their lives in distant places. This requires that we think about the glaring inequalities in the world and the defects in models of global development based on GDP and average income in a country. In this way, students can acquire the understanding that makes it more possible to solve common problems in the world because these are everyones problems and not just those of one group or one country. The third ability is that of narrative imagination, i.e. the ability to understand intelligently how the world is experienced by people who are different from oneself, their emotions, desires and vulnerability. It requires empathy without which rationality is obtuse and a genuine and humble attempt to understand the experiences of others. Nussbaum provides rich examples of how these three core capabilities might be developed
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456 European Journal of Education through liberal arts education. This raises the issue of a curriculum which requires all students to study some arts and some science subjects and even follow a course in philosophy. Further curriculum and pedagogical guidance can be extracted from Sens (2009) emphasis that capability is a kind of power and a central concept in human obligation. Curriculum would then advance other-regarding goals and obligations to use ones power on behalf of other human beings. Because of our shared humanity, we are enjoined to bring about the changes that would enhance human development in the world. Sen emphasises that if there is a will to reduce injustice in the world, then there is a strong social argument for doing just that. Having obligations to others arises out of our view of ourselves not as isolated individuals, but as members of communities. This is exemplied in the social work education provided at one South African University (Walker et al., 2010) where lecturers face the challenge of educating young people who may not have been exposed to the hardships faced by poor South Africans. Hence, students need exposure to a curriculum which enables their understanding of structural factors in society which cause and perpetuate poverty and inequality. Lecturers aim to develop in students an understanding of social justice, a knowledge and understanding of historical inequities, as well as policies and programmes which aim to transform society so that peoples human rights are recognised. Social work graduates need to understand global trends which affect South African society because, one lecturer said, Its critically important to understand the forces that are at play from the level of global trends, globalisation of the economy, the impact of trans-national companies, the impact of everything thats happening in the economic sector right down to the level of individual people who are poor and unemployed and why they are poor and unemployed. Through curriculum, this social work department sought to educate particular kinds of professionals who are oriented towards critical contributions to society and the public good, forming agents who have obligations towards others. Human development, capabilities and functioning dimensions are multidimensional all matter and the development of one supports that of others so that aims, pedagogies and outcomes would need to be aligned.We could not easily advance empowerment and participation through transmission teaching methods, or belonging through methods which did not acknowledge difference, or human security through methods which undermined student condence. Similarly, assessment would need to be aligned with curriculum and pedagogy to advance the learning of desirable functionings outcomes (e.g. assessing critical and ethical knowing or reasoned analysis). Additionally, assessment would ensure the standards and quality of the curriculum nothing is to be gained for human development from poor quality or low standards.The extensive literature on assessment and good practice methods is easily adapted or borrowed for these transformative purposes. A Framework to Design and Operationalise Curriculum Boni and Gasper (2009) apply human development more broadly to evaluating quality in university education in terms of values of well-being, participation and empowerment, equity and diversity, and sustainability.They then sketch how these values might look in the central university activities of teaching, research, social engagement, governance and university environment, a useful reminder to situate
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curriculum not only in a social system, but also in university conditions. They include participation in curriculum design by both staff and students, the idea of an open curriculum which allows students to create their own knowledge elds, and emphasise the need to include global issues in curriculum, giving examples of ethics, sustainable development, and peace studies. Based on human development dimensions and Nussbaums and Sens guidance on education, a curriculum chart might look something like Table I. The human development aims are xed and all need to be included.The capabilities are only indicative others may be selected, provided they are aligned with human development and are multi-dimensional. Curriculum knowledge would be contextual and is not specied here. Ideas are suggested for human development inected pedagogies so that what is taught is consistent with how it is taught (Walker, 2010). Finally, the functionings align with the priority capabilities. The alignment crosses from aims to functionings and from functionings to aims. What I have proposed is a curriculum framework which goes beyond human capital and economic growth to place people at the centre of a development process. The framework could be used for participatory curriculum design, action and evaluation, where the human development dimensions would apply to both the process and the substance of a curriculum. This would require a substantial realignment of power relations in universities from being a didactic student production line (Taylor, 2008, p. 99) to reexive and deliberative organisational practices. The implications for curriculum design are challenging and potentially radical, not only for curriculum, but also for the purposes of universities and what they value and reward (Taylor, 2008). But this, of course, is the point in trying to produce an alternative imaginary for curriculum as the bedrock of the educational experience at universities (Ibid), challenging human capital policy and knowledge as a commodity, and minimally seeking to insert human development into curriculum debates and curriculum review in universities. Conclusion At stake is the claim that a curriculum grounded in human development dimensions, capabilities and functioning achievements can form rich human beings. Graduate formation is then one site where we might advance justice or reduce injustice in the world (Sen, 2009, p. 337). A university education provides knowledge for new ways of understanding oneself and the world beyond the university. Does a university and a curriculum, we can then ask, encourage students to develop maps for civic and social responsibility and contributions to democratic public life? Or does it promote pathways for consumerism, individualism, compliance, and only private benets? A university may of course do both as a complex organisation, but it is likely that one value position will be dominant (even if contested) among the powerful groups who lead institutional planning and strategy and among policy makers. In current times, rather regrettably, reductive human capital drives policy and institutional strategies in European universities. However, policy implementation is neither monolithic nor entirely hegemonic; there is still considerable diversity at the level of academic staff and programmes, thereby offering spaces for hope. Therefore, I propose that human development and capabilities applied to university education, and specically to guide and evaluate curriculum and pedagogy, could contribute to teaching and learning for fertile human understanding
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Table I. Curriculum, human development and capabilities

Curriculum & knowledge selection principles Curriculum in action pedagogy Socratic methods Participatory methods -discussion and dialogue Reexive practices Functionings (and identities)

Human development dimensions (curriculum aims)

Indicative capabilities to be created through curriculum

Empowerment and participation Equity

Practical reasoning

Thick critical thinking and reasoned analysis

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Sustainability

Right relationships

Belonging

Respect

Acting as critical agent in ones own life Capacity to live a decent life with a fair chance of choosing among preferred alternatives Disciplined and independent thinker, having multiple perspectives on the world, open-minded Aware of moral and ethical debates and questions Condent Courage to decide what one stands for and for what one is accountable. Responsible other-regarding agentsobligations to others/ contribute to justice in society

Human security

Imagination & empathy (including emotions) Obligations to others less advantaged/vulnerable Global citizenship

Inclusive &intercultural methods; collaborative work across differences Culture of respect for all; safe learning environment Critical scrutiny of inequalities

Ethical awareness

This would be determined contextually subject by subject for higher knowledge and intellectual development, but could include general ideas like attention to quality of life, ethics, global processes and human interconnectedness, inequalities, environment, & interdisciplinarity, real problems and issues of the local context, and required study of both science and arts subjects. Social engagement in development activities/experiential/service learning Participatory action research New technologies for learning

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Respect for the natural environment and for life Recognise full human dignity of all Decent humble, curious and tolerant towards others Respectful of the right to be different

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and vivid human connections. Universities, uniquely in society, still combine many functions How universities set about their functions to produce scholars and scientists, educate professionals, and form enlightened citizens, and with what impac,t are of signicance in sustaining good lives and democratic public participation. The particular kinds of things universities should do would be to educate for richly signicant lives suffused with public good values to act responsibly towards others. Students would learn not only a curriculum of knowledge and skills but also the difference between simply having knowledge and skills and having the commitment and values to use these to the benet of others as well as oneself. We all live in a world of inequalities which ought to shock us. In 2002, Tanzania with a population of 35 million had a GDP of $10.15 billion, compared to the net worth of the 10 richest individuals in the US in the same year of $127 billion (World Bank, cited in Basu, 2006, p. 1361). Comparing countries, Norway, the richest of the 152 countries surveyed, had a per capita income of $43,400 in 2002, compared to one of the three countries ranked at the bottom of the per capita income table, Burundi, with a per capita income of $90 (Ibid). Basu (2006, p. 1361) asks whether people looking back to today will wonder how primitive we were that we tolerated this. It ought not to be beyond the imaginative reach and responsiveness of our universities and ourselves as the people who work in them to harness through university education the wealth, creativity and power of humanity in the 21st century to create a better world. The alternative may well be what Rabindranath Tagore (quoted in Alam and Chakrabarty 2011, p. 177) warns of as having the conscience of a ghost and the callous perfection of an automaton. In the end, we must ask ourselves: what should public universities be doing and trying to achieve? What policy design and curriculum would convert the resources of public education into benets for students and society? Melanie Walker, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa, walkermj@ufs.ac.za REFERENCES Alam, F. & Chakravarty, R. (Eds) (2011) The Essential Tagore (Cambridge, MA, The Belknap Press). Alkire, S. & Deneulin, S. (2009) A normative framework for development, in: S. Deneulin & L. Shani (Eds) An Introduction to the Human Development and Capability approach: freedom and agency (London, Earthscan). Barnett, R. (2009) Knowing and becoming in the higher education curriculum, Studies in Higher Education, 34, pp. 429440. Barnett, R. & Coate, K. (2005) Engaging the Curriculum in Higher Education (Maidenhead, Open University Press). Basu, K. (2006) Globalization, poverty and inequality: what is the relationship? What can be done? World Development, 34, pp. 13611373. Boni, S. & Gasper, D. (2009) The university as it might be Contributions of a human development approach to rethinking quality of universities. Paper presented at the 6th international conference of the Human Development and Capability Association, Lima, September 2009.

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Sen, A. (1999) Development as Freedom (Oxford, Oxford University Press). Sen, A. (2009) The Idea of Justice (London, Allen Lane). Shay, S. (2011) Curriculum formation: a case study from history, Studies in Higher Education, 36, pp. 315330. Tawney, R. H. (1966) The Radical Tradition (Harmondsworth, Penguin Books). Taylor, P. (2008) Higher education curricula for human and social development; in: Guni (Ed) Higher Education in the World (Houndmills, Palgrave MacMillan). Thomson (1999) How doing justice got boxed in: a cautionary curriculum tale for policy activist; in: B. Johnson & A. Reid (Eds) Contesting the Curriculum (Sydney, Social Science Press). Walker, M. (2006) Higher Education Pedagogies. A Capabilities Approach (Maidenhead, Open University Press). Walker, M. (2008) Ontology, Identity Formation and Lifelong Learning Outcomes: theorising the relationship between discipline-based research and teaching (York, Higher Education Academy). Walker, M. (2010) Teaching the human development and capability approach: some pedagogical implications, in: S. Deneulin & L. Shani (Eds) An Introduction to the Human Development and Capability Approach: freedom and agency (London, Earthscan). Walker, M, Mclean, M. Dison, A. & Vaughan, R. (2010) Higher Education and Poverty Reduction: the formation of public good professionals in universities. www.nottingham.ac.uk/EducationResearchProjects/DevelopmentDiscourses. index.aspx. Young, M. (2010) Bringing Knowledge Back In (London and New York, Routledge).

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