This article was downloaded by: [University of Glasgow] On: 16 March 2013, At: 07:19 Publisher: Routledge Informa Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccom20 Universities, professional capabilities and contributions to the public good in South Africa Melanie Walker a a Postgraduate School, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa Version of record first published: 14 May 2012. To cite this article: Melanie Walker (2012): Universities, professional capabilities and contributions to the public good in South Africa, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education, 42:6, 819-838 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2012.685584 PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and- conditions This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Any substantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing, systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden. The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representation that the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of any instructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primary sources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings, demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly or indirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
Transcript
This article was downloaded by: [University of Glasgow]On: 16 March 2013, At: 07:19Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
Compare: A Journal of Comparativeand International EducationPublication details, including instructions for authors andsubscription information:http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ccom20
Universities, professional capabilitiesand contributions to the public good inSouth AfricaMelanie Walker aa Postgraduate School, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein,South AfricaVersion of record first published: 14 May 2012.
To cite this article: Melanie Walker (2012): Universities, professional capabilities and contributionsto the public good in South Africa, Compare: A Journal of Comparative and International Education,42:6, 819-838
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2012.685584
PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE
Full terms and conditions of use: http://www.tandfonline.com/page/terms-and-conditions
This article may be used for research, teaching, and private study purposes. Anysubstantial or systematic reproduction, redistribution, reselling, loan, sub-licensing,systematic supply, or distribution in any form to anyone is expressly forbidden.
The publisher does not give any warranty express or implied or make any representationthat the contents will be complete or accurate or up to date. The accuracy of anyinstructions, formulae, and drug doses should be independently verified with primarysources. The publisher shall not be liable for any loss, actions, claims, proceedings,demand, or costs or damages whatsoever or howsoever caused arising directly orindirectly in connection with or arising out of the use of this material.
Universities, professional capabilities and contributions to thepublic good in South Africa
Melanie Walker*
Postgraduate School, University of the Free State, Bloemfontein, South Africa
The generation of a public-good, capabilities-based approach to profes-sional education in South African universities is outlined and proposedas a contribution to wider social transformation. The relevance andimportance of understanding what Amartya Sen describes as ‘capabilityfailure’ in the lives of people living in poverty is explored and, follow-ing from this, how professionals ought to contribute by virtue of theiruniversity education, and hence privilege, to making people’s lives gobetter. The key criterion in developing and evaluating professional edu-cation is then how professionals are educated to expand the scope ofeffective freedoms each person has to lead a life she has reason to value,underpinned at all times with respect for human dignity. The process bywhich a Professional Capabilities Index (PCI) was generated theoreti-cally and empirically is explained and the argument advanced for thePCI as a practical tool for professional education oriented to improvingpublic services for the poor and, hence, the public good.
Keywords: poverty reduction; professional education; capabilities
For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a waythat respects and enhances the freedoms of others. (Nelson Mandela 2005,52.)
Introduction
In the face of severe inequalities and capability failure in real lives in SouthAfrica, this paper examines how the capabilities approach (Nussbaum 2000,2011; Sen 1999, 2009) can be mobilized as an ethical framework forprofessional education and a practical approach to social transformation.More specifically, the paper investigates the contribution of universities tothe public good, that is, to reducing remediable injustices, especially forthose living in conditions of poverty. The paper adds to a growing body of
ISSN 0305-7925 print/ISSN 1469-3623 online� 2012 British Association for International and Comparative Educationhttp://dx.doi.org/10.1080/03057925.2012.685584http://www.tandfonline.com
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work taking up capabilities and education in relation to, among others,gender, disability, higher education, children and quality in education (forexample, Biggeri, Ballet, and Comim 2011; Terzi 2008; Tikly and Barrett2011; Unterhalter 2007; Walker 2006; Walker and Unterhalter 2007).
Drawing on South African case study research, the paper explains howan innovative capabilities-based qualitative measurement framework – apublic-good Professional Capabilities Index (PCI) – has been developed as anormative and empirical contribution to more justice. The proposal is thatuniversities in South Africa – a country of unsustainable and distressinginequalities (Seekings and Nattrass 2005) – ought to educate public-goodprofessionals to make their ‘horizons of vision wider’ (Sen 1999, 199) sothat professionals can contribute to reducing injustice through their actions.Based on a normative view of development understood as the expansion ofpeople’s freedoms or ‘capabilities’ in order to choose and have valuable out-comes or ‘functionings’ (Nussbaum, 2000, 2011; Sen, 1999, 2009), the PCIproposes capability-based dimensions for professional education, oriented inparticular to quality public service provided for people living in conditionsof poverty. The comparative measure embedded in the PCI is how universi-ties educate agents for inclusive and public-good professional ethics andpractices, advancing the freedoms and empowerment of graduates and, inturn, their clients. At issue is that the quality of professional education inuniversities ought to be a resource for capability development and expan-sion, which then enables the poor and vulnerable – supported and empow-ered in part by professionals and their public service – to be able to achievevaluable goals and to have a dignified and secure life.
The normative position taken, therefore, is that South African profession-als ought to advance the capabilities of the poor, vulnerable and disadvan-taged, who are crucially dependent on the quality of public services such aseducation, health, social and legal services (Keefer and Khemani 2005). Ifthese are not working, they have no option to buy such services or go else-where. The evaluative question for professional education and practicewould then be to ask whether the freedoms of people have been enhanced,while the effectiveness criterion would attend to how human developmentdepends on enhancing people’s agency (Sen 1999). Both reasons are impor-tant. In the first instance, professionals ought to be educated with the knowl-edge, awareness and social values for operationalizing inclusive publicservice, even though universities cannot be held wholly accountable forgraduates’ actual public-good choices once they leave university. Here pub-lic policy actions must be in alignment as well. Sen (1999) is clear that indi-vidual and social freedoms reinforce each other and depend also on socialassociations. Graduates, of course, are citizens too, and the PCI attempts tocapture this notion of professional-citizen, the point being that professionalscan also struggle as citizens for public policies that are aligned to the public
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good – they should not be passive bystanders to the social policies thataffect their working lives.
Stories of capability failure
Two stories, one of numbers, the other of narrative, exemplify what is atstake.
The first story presents contemporary patterns of inequality in SouthAfrica, rooted in apartheid-era policies that most disadvantaged the majoritypopulation of Africans. In 1994, when the first democratic elections tookplace and finally dislodged the old regime, significant inequalities of incomeand quality of life between the wealthiest (mostly white) and the poorest(mostly black) households were already deeply embedded (Seekings andNattrass 2005). Policies of redistributive social transfers and affirmativeaction to promote black economic empowerment have resulted in significantracial inclusion, nonetheless the structure of overall inequality has persisted,including within-group income differentiation adding to persistent between-group inequalities. Citing ‘Statistics South Africa’, Hall (2011) reports thatin 2006 the average household income was about £6200. However, at anaverage of £23,400, the household income for white South Africans was 7.4times that of black African South Africans, which stood at just over £3,000per year. In short, the majority of Africans still suffer, Hall suggests, in allfour of these quality of life domains: income and material deprivation,employment deprivation, education deprivation and living environmentdeprivation.
The second story brings to vivid life these statistical inequalities. InMarch, 2009, Cape Town newspapers (see West Cape News 2009) reportedthe story of one-year-old Unabantu Mali. Unabantu had fallen ill, so hisgrandmother strapped the child to her back and walked to the nearest com-munity health clinic, where she found a long queue. Realising that Unabantuneeded urgent treatment, she walked to the KTC Hospital two hours awaybut was told that it only treated adults. She then walked to the Gugulethucommunity health clinic, another kilometre away. She approached a nurseasking for emergency treatment – the nurse told her she would attend to thechild, but failed to do so. After an hour, she was told to return the next day.Walking home, she had a feeling that her grandchild was dying, the weighton her back felt ‘cold and heavy’, as though she was carrying ‘stones’. Thebaby’s grieving mother, Nomantombi, later told reporters she wished herdead child was with her so they could ‘sing or dance’ together as Unabantuhad loved dancing. West Cape News (2009) reported that voluntary sectororganizations and members of the public were outraged, blaming the clinicstaff who were supposed to be responsible for everyone’s heath. Eventhough a subsequent inquiry cleared the staff at all three clinics, their actionsarguably contributed to the ‘corrosive disadvantage’ (Wolf and De-Shalit
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2007) and capability deprivation of this family. Public services are staffedby professionals and in this case they failed to serve a poor family in need,severely compromising their effective freedoms to achieve valuable individ-ual outcomes (for example, good health for Unabantu, singing and dancingwith her son for his mother, dignity for his grandmother).
Capabilities is therefore advanced as a possibility for a more hopeful andless helpless approach to professional work, even in hard times. Unless pro-fessionals are entirely powerless in the face of creeping neo-liberalism, thereis something to be done to reduce injustice.
Capabilities and professionalism
A view of professionalism is now proposed, grounded in the view that uni-versity-based professional education of nurses, doctors, lawyers, engineers,teachers, social workers, economists and so on ought to contribute to whatSen (1999, 2009) and Nussbaum (2000, 2011) call ‘capabilities’ (freedomsor opportunities) to form and choose valuable beings and doings (‘function-ings’ or achievements or outcomes), which enable us to choose and to livein ways we find meaningful, productive and rewarding individually and col-lectively to the good of society. Capabilities are the potential to achievefunctionings – such as being knowledgeable, using one’s knowledge inworthwhile ways, being inter-culturally aware and sensitive and so on. Theyare the actual freedoms people have to do and to be what they value doingand being. The questions Sen and Nussbaum ask in evaluating well-beingand justice are: What are people actually able to do and be? What opportu-nities do they have to be and do? Sen (1999) rejects the view that improvedlives can only follow from economic growth – there is a range of valuedhuman ends, he argues, so that being a better worker/producer is not theonly evaluative end for human lives. Rather, the key purpose of develop-ment is human development, enlarging all worthwhile human choices. ForNussbaum (2011), fundamental to creating capabilities is the human dignityof each person. Any ‘decent’ plan ‘would seek to promote a range ofdiverse and incommensurable goods, involving the unfolding and develop-ment of distinct human abilities’ (127). Because human beings have dignity,‘it is bad to treat them like objects, pushing them around without their con-sent’ (130). The question then becomes what kind of education plan ‘per-mits human abilities to develop and human equality to be respected’ (133).Education should help people ‘to develop their best selves’ (Noddings 2003,23). This core idea of creating capabilities and the part potentially played byprofessional education then underpins the PCI, its development andapplication.
However, the position advanced here is that capabilities and functioningsshould not be not left entirely unspecified for comparative assessments of jus-tice (Sen 2009). They should point to what it is that humans – professionals
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in this case – ought to try and become for their own good lives and theflourishing lives of others. In other words, there is an ideal of the ‘good’professional at stake, to enable us to evaluate good professional practicesagainst the less good. Even though Sen (2009) himself is not in favour of‘ideal’ justice, it is hard to see how comparisons alone, for example offorms of professional practice, would enable us to adjudicate or evaluatewhat is right and good without some professional and social ideal towardswhich we hope to advance (Deneulin 2010). We cannot avoid moral reason-ing and moral judgements about professional practice and we make thesejudgments in relation to deliberations about the ‘best way to live’ (Sandel2009, 10) because justice is ‘inescapably judgmental, and the right way tovalue things’ (261). These ‘things’ include professional education andprofessional accountability and judgements about the right thing to do(Deneulin 2010). To develop through education our personal powers is thenalso to have a view on which powers are worth developing – and which arenot (Crocker 1995). Here Nussbaum’s (2011) foundational value of humandignity offers guidance and substantially informs the PCI. Nonetheless,notwithstanding Deneulin’s (2010) critique of Sen’s idea of justice for notproviding the ‘ethical equipment’ (387) to deal ‘with hard moral choices’,his understanding of agency does involve critical and purposeful action,including deliberation about reasons and values (Crocker and Robeyns2010), which feasibly includes, and even requires, the formation of moralcapabilities (van Staveren 2001).
Sen (2009) further emphasizes that as a key feature of justice, we needto understand that capability is power. If someone has the effective power,he argues, to make a change that they can see will reduce injustice in theworld, there is a strong social argument for doing just that. Furthermore,research on social change suggests that if [professional] elites are sufficientlysocially aware and conscientised, they can play a significant role in transfor-mative development, not only through quality in public services, but also bybroadening civic participation and consolidating democratic reforms (DeSwaan et al. 2000). Thus, central to the PCI is the assumption that profes-sional education has the potential to form agents who understand andrespond to the plights of others and who have acquired through their univer-sity education the competencies, knowledge and values to contribute tohuman development. In this context, professional graduates have effectivepower to contribute to society and are obligated to do so, most especiallySouth African graduates from generally well-off socio-economic back-grounds. This is not dissimilar to Rawl’s (1971) ‘difference’ principle, whichpermits some inequalities if these are to the benefit of the disadvantaged.Thus, if better-off South Africans get to go to University (bearing in mindthat 84% of South Africans do not have this opportunity [see Singh, 2011]),this can be tolerated only if their talents are a common asset to benefit thoseless fortunate.
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Salais (2010) adds that we need to revisit the idea of what we mean by‘public services’ in order to revive the understanding that a service is ‘pub-lic’, not because it is publicly funded, but rather when it is understood toserve the public – that is, citizens with legitimate claims on state resourcesthat can expand their capabilities (legal aid, health care, social welfare,urban infrastructure, clean water and the like). Thus, the burden and chal-lenges of transformation should not fall entirely on professionals in the pub-lic sector, leaving those in private work free of obligations for change.Instead, Salais proposes a ‘resources-capability approach’. One suchresource would be the education of professionals to provide services for all.State resources might be deployed via public and private providers but at alltimes ‘serving’ the interests of all, rather than profits for shareholders. Forexample, all lawyers could be required to provide a reasonable number ofpro bono days every year, especially if they worked in private practice. AsSalais explains, ‘placing people in situations of capability implies profoundchange in the criteria and implementation of public policies’ (14). This is afurther value-added element of capabilities to understandings of profession-alism – both in so far as professionals work to form capabilities, but alsothat they ought, as part of their professional responsibility, to lobby activelyfor public policies that promote conditions for quality of life and well-being.The privilege of professional education confers obligations to serve the pub-lic in some way, whether one is employed in public service or privately.
Capabilities allows us to capture both a normative framework (what weought to do to advance agency and well-being) for professional ethics andthe pragmatic evaluation of real-life, messy social circumstances. Capabili-ties adds values to debates around professionalism (Freidson 2004) byrequiring that we look at multi-dimensional freedoms and functionings of‘clients’ for well-being, quality of life and agency. We are enjoined to evalu-ate actual lives. Moreover, Sen and Nussbaum are specifically concernedwith the poor, vulnerable and disadvantaged so that a capabilities-based pro-fessionalism requires professionals to attend to these lives, whatever elsethey might choose to do and be as professionals. This requires reasoningabout good lives but this need not be prescriptive. Pragmatically, the focusof the PCI would still be on of the quality, reach and responsiveness of pro-fessional education and practices, rather than tackling system-wide inequali-ties all at once. A version of professionalism that inflects towards justice,‘thick’ empowerment (Monkman 2011) and capabilities development alignswith Freidson’s (2004) perspective that, ‘service must always be judged andbalanced against a larger public good, sometimes one anticipated in thefuture’, so that practitioners ‘have a duty to evaluate what they do in lightof that larger good’ and to do so not as ‘passive servants’ (59).
To sum up, professionals can advance the capabilities of others, but inthe example of Unabantu Mali did not do this. University graduates in SouthAfrica are advantaged overall, they have more opportunities and more
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power; they then owe obligations to others. Professionals ought to be edu-cated in the direction of holding public-good values and of commitments tothe poor, vulnerable and disadvantaged in any unequal society, but mostespecially in a country like South Africa, with its shocking gap between richand poor (Seekings and Nattrass 2005). Taken together, this points to acapability-based professional ethics and practical engagements to bring aboutsocial changes. It requires the translation of normative ideas about justiceinto strategies and targeted interventions, of which the PCI is arguably onesuch example. This would constitute a strategic intervention in fostering ‘afair and democratically enabling society’ (Singh 2011, 483) and would fur-ther embed higher and university education in a framework of social justice.Moreover, on this reading – far from being irrelevant to justice in the world,or the idea of justice – universities take their place as critical spaces to con-tribute to social change in appropriate ways by ‘extending and deepeninghuman understanding’ (Collini 2011, 13), including here the formation ofprofessionals who can reason with others about what constitutes an ethicalprofessional life.1 We might reasonably expect of universities that profes-sionals are educated along all three dimensions of Barnett’s (1997) ‘critical-ity’ – critical knowledge, critical self-knowledge and critical awareness ofhow to act in the world.
The key criterion of quality in professional education is then how profes-sionals are educated to expand the scope of effective freedom each personhas to lead the life he or she has reason to value (Sen 1999) (including, ofcourse, their own lives) and how they can be educated to contribute to pub-lic policies and actions that enhance valuable functionings that are importantfor freedom.
Why a list of professional capabilities?
The research project generated a professional capabilities list, taking intoaccount Sen (2009), who broadly is not in favour of canonical list but is notagainst lists per se, provided they are generated through public reasoningand scrutiny. On the other hand, Nussbaum (2000) has generated a list of 10central universal human capabilities,2 all of which are required for a flour-ishing life.3 The methodological problem raised by Burchardt and Vizard(2011) in their account of drafting a list of capability domains for equalityand human rights monitoring in the UK, is how to achieve the conditionsfor fair and democratic deliberation demanded by Sen’s approach andimplied in the criticism of Nussbaum (e.g. Robeyns 2003). In their research,they opted for a human rights-based ‘trumping’ rule in any conflict betweentheory and deliberative consultation.
The PCI project, for its part, opted for a revisable list based both on the-ory and empirically on what diverse stakeholders regarded as valuable pro-fessional capabilities in order to give content to the idea of ‘professional’
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and professional ethics. The PCI had to be aligned with reducing poverty,inequality and injustice and sought to capture this in the label of ‘public-good’ as having sufficient flexibility, while not being open to any or allinterpretations. The ‘trumping’ rule in operationalizing capabilities and adeliberative process through data collection and discussion was taken fromNussbaum’s (2011) fundamental concern with human dignity, which is per-suasive in giving content to the idea of transformation in South Africa, bothin the arenas of justification for a list and its implementation. Nussbaum’suniversal list, moreover, can be very helpful for thinking about all the capa-bilities people need to flourish. The research approach for developing a pro-fessional capabilities list along these lines is set out below. However, morethan a list of professional capabilities was required. A complex Indexemerged in which capabilities were embedded in educational and socialarrangements to capture Sen’s (1999) concern that:
Individual freedom is quintessentially a social product, and there is a two-way relation between (1) social arrangements to expand individual freedomsand (2) the use of individual freedoms not only to improve the respectivelives but also to make social arrangements more appropriate and effective.(31)
Thus, the list is especially significant, but not the only element in the PCI.The PCI takes cognisance of the issue that holding individual professionalsaccountable – as, for example, in the case of Unabantu Mali – where socialor structural conditions are unfavourable to quality in public service couldbe unfair. But it does not entirely let professionals off the hook, given Sen’sdialectic of individual and social freedoms. To do so may be to wring ourhands in despair and do nothing. Fundamental to Sen’s approach is alwaysto do something when faced when remediable injustices – a clinic nurse, forexample, who should have known how ill the child was and attended tohim immediately. At the very least, the difference the PCI could have madewould have been in the form of hopeful professional education that shapesdeep public service commitments and a sense of individual and social obli-gations to make real lives go better, but allied also to learning how to advo-cate and work for structural change with other professionals and with civilsociety.
Developing a PCI
Drafting the PCI involved a four stage process: (1) identifying ‘comprehen-sive’ capabilities that make for a fully human life, (2) producing a subset ofprofessional capabilities towards values and practices which formingcomprehensive capabilities, (3) identifying transformative educationalarrangements and objective conditions and (4) bringing these together as amulti-dimensional Index.
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Phase 1 – theoretical
The first stage of developing a list of professional capabilities was theoreti-cal and normative. As noted above, the core underlying idea is that ofhuman development and capabilities. Capability expansion would be enabledthrough the availability of quality public services provided by professionals.This is augmented by a concept and value of public-good professionalismand the formation in universities of professional public-good capabilities.Thus the conceptual framing was (1) capabilities, (2) aligned with public-good professionalism and (3) human dignity, as noted above. Through (2)and (3) the project hoped that professional capabilities developed throughprofessional education processes would align and integrate individual devel-opment and commitments to others, rather than promoting selfishness and aturning away from social good contributions. Without such synthesis, wewould not have the kind of professionals who can bring about social changefor justice in South Africa.
The ‘comprehensive’ dimensions – all the capabilities everyone needs forfull human flourishing – were taken from Nussbaum (2000), with additionsfrom Wolff and De-Shalit (2007).4 But given the research focus, the furtherquestion was asked: which of these capabilities and functionings are specificto professionals working for social transformation and which should, there-fore, be incorporated as broad goals in professional education and training?
Phase 2 – ‘deliberative consultation’ (Burchardt and Vizard 2011)
In answering this question, the research project aspired to a process of speci-fication that would be collaborative, visible, defensible and revisable (Alkire2002). To operationalize these principles, five cases studies were conductedin 2008–2009 at three South African universities with diverse histories. Theuniversities were pragmatically chosen for their geographical proximity, forreasons of access and for their diversity. They were: Silvertree (historicallywhite and English speaking), Fynbos (historically black, ‘disadvantaged’)and Acacia (historically white, advantaged, Afrikaans speaking).5 Five pro-fessional education case study departments across the three universities wereinvestigated – Social Work, Public Health, Law, Engineering and Theology.Again, the choice was at least partly pragmatic in terms of which depart-ments were interested in the project, but also there was a deliberate focus ona range of professional fields and professional fields with varying social sta-tus or proximity to poverty work, rather than just one, to enable a wider setof perspectives on professional education. To facilitate ongoing dialogue, theproject included a research working group (RWG) at each site, comprising adean or other senior academic and two academics from the relevant depart-ment. To capture a range of diverse perspectives university leaders, lecturers,students, alumni, NGOs and professional bodies were all interviewed bymembers of the research team.6 Volunteer students, identified with the help
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of each department, were interviewed in focus groups and included blackand white and men and women students. In addition, a dean or deputy deanand head of department and one or two lecturers in each department wereinterviewed, as well as a university leader, all individually. Again, theseincluded people from different racial groups and genders. Non-governmentalorganisations were selected on the basis of the focus and relevance of theirwork to particular professional groups.
In total, 120 people were interviewed: 23 in Social Work, 19 in Engi-neering, 25 in Theology, 27 in Law and 26 in Public Health. The greaternumbers of persons at each site turned on how many students we were ableto contact for the focus-group interviews. Interviews were tape recordedwith permission and fully transcribed. Generally, interviews were open andgenerated rich and nuanced data on desired capabilities and experiences ofuniversity education and social change. Variation of professional capabilityemphasis and career paths across the universities and professional sites wasparticularly informative.
In addition, notes were kept of: face-to-face meetings with each RWG inAugust and October 2008, a joint workshop in March 2009 for RWGs andthe research team and a final meeting with each RWG in October 2009.There was also regular email communication between each RWG co-coordi-nator and the Principal Investigator. Poor and vulnerable service users werenot interviewed for reasons of access and ethics. However, contemporarynews and policy reports and secondary literatures were drawn on to furtherinterrogate assumptions about what the users might value for their own livesand their interactions with professionals, for example the study of 60,000poor people by Narayan and Petesch (2002) and Wolff and De-Shalit’s(2007) study. The process of data collection and dialogue is summarized inTable 1.
Thus, in the second stage, the project collected empirical data from arange of stakeholders and engaged in ongoing deliberative consultation withthe participating universities.
This process of consultation was sufficiently participatory and open as toinform a reasonably robust selection of capability dimensions as a frame-work for interrogation and, unlike many research projects, built in discussionand dissemination about both the normative framework and the empiricaldata from the beginning of the project, rather than leaving this to the end.
Phase 3 – identifying professional capabilities7
The data collection aimed to establish which professional capabilities werevalued and why, the form and purposes of professional education, educa-tional arrangements and the overall university ethos in relation to povertyreduction, and what might be external constraints or obstacles. The dialoguewith each RWG and debate through open seminars provided feedback on
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the emerging list and the capabilities approach as a normative framework.What emerged over 15 months was a multi-layered ‘Index’, comprising fourmeta-functioning’s and eight professional capabilities, embedded ineducational arrangements to foster the capabilities and functionings of stu-dents and how they were being prepared for what it means to ‘act rightly’as a professional in conditions of profound inequality and poor quality oflife for large numbers of South Africans. Analytically, if the data pointed topublic-good professionalism in alumni and students, it was assumed it washappening in some way in professional education and that there should thenbe evidence of a ‘red thread’, in turn pulled through the emerging list ofprofessional capabilities. Both the qualitative data and the various opportuni-ties for dialogue were significant in enabling the voices of a range of peopleinvolved in professional education and in professional work to reveal howpublic-good professionals were being educated in universities, notwithstand-ing tensions, contradictions and constraints of change and transformationand a plurality of strategies.
The eight capabilities are the opportunities that would be provided in andthrough professional education in universities, for example the opportunityor freedom for informed vision, the functionings would be the valuableoutcomes from the formation of these capabilities (see Table 2). The
Table 1. Process of deliberative consultation.
Date Form of consultation
August 2008–November2008
Interviews and focus groups:120 people consulted on valuable professionalcapabilities 3 universities, 5 professional groupsStudents (black and white, men and women, workingand middle class), Lecturers, Heads of Department,University leaders, Alumni, NGOs, Professionalbodies.
August 2008October 2008March 2009October 2009
Research working group (RWG) face-to-face meetingor workshop x1 in each University. Each RWGincluded one person from the professionaldepartment and two members with Faculty and/orUniversity wide roles. The two tasks of the RWGswere: to respond to the data and emerging analysisand to discuss how transformation might beunderstood in relation to human development andpoverty reduction.
Public seminars in South Africa on the research.(South African education conference)
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capabilities are therefore presented as vague and broad, while the function-ings are specified in more detail, based on what was found in qualitativedata, across the professions. The capabilities could apply in many differentcontexts, the functionings may be more contextually specific. Functioningscould be translated into indicators for some kind of evaluation tool but thecomplexity of professional practices means being careful not to allow thedesire for measurement to strip away such complexity. Nonetheless,‘informed vision’ could be captured by a number of indicators, one exampleof which might be something like ‘a graduate recognizes social justiceissues relevant to her professional field’ (see Nunan, George, and McCaus-land 2000). However, more work in the area of indicators is still needed.
Functionings and capabilities are multi-dimensional and mutually rein-forcing. Four meta-functionings were also extrapolated. The proposal is thatby virtue of their professional education at university, graduates ought to beable to do and to choose to do and to value being and doing, in all thesemulti-dimensional ways, as public-good professionals who enable andempower others:
(1) recognise the full dignity of every human being,(2) act for social transformation, and to reduce injustice,(3) make sound, knowledgeable, thoughtful, imaginative professional
judgements and(4) work in solidarity with others to expand the comprehensive capabili-
ties (‘fully human lives’) of people living in poverty.
As noted earlier, professional capabilities are formed through education inuniversities, albeit that they will also be shaped by individual biographies.Dimensions of educational arrangements and university conditions are alsonormative, that is, they point to what it is departments and universities oughtto be doing. They also align with Burckhardt and Vizard’s (2011) in/equalityelements of ‘treatment’ (not being discriminated against, being treated withdignity and respect) and ‘autonomy’ (being empowered having choice andcontrol over critical life choices) and are effectively Sen’s (1999) ‘process’freedoms. The Index could be used as a tool to evaluate the quality of pro-fessional education in terms of the eight dimensions of central and valuableprofessional capabilities (opportunities, freedoms) and along dimensions offunctionings (valuable professional education outcomes), treatment (the pro-cess of acquiring professional knowledge and skills) and autonomy (becom-ing and being an agent). Both the ‘culmination outcomes’ and theeducational process of arriving at these outcomes is then included for richer‘comprehensive outcomes’ (Sen 1999, 27).
Based on the empirical data, the educational processes or arrangementsthat emerged as more likely to support the development of autonomous pub-lic-good professional functionings include: curriculum (e.g. incorporate key
questions of social and political significance, including opportunities to learnhow poor people can be empowered and capacitated), appropriate pedago-gies (e.g. engendering respectful interactions and valuing diversity), encour-aging professional ways of being (e.g. an awareness of the differenceprofessional work can make to communities) and attention to departmentalcultures (e.g. by encouraging projects responsive to poverty). Four univer-sity dimensions were identified as important in supporting these processes:(1) institutional culture, (2) advancing criticism, deliberation and responsibil-ity, (3) social engagement and (4) appropriate contributions to building justfutures (see Table 3).
Together, these interlocking elements of meta-functionings, professionalcapabilities and educational arrangements, as outlined above, make up a nor-mative multi-dimensional framework to guide situational analysis, develop-ment and evaluation of professional education for truly human development.
However, these normative elements do not yet complete the Index. Thenormative elements need to be situated historically and contextually. Thereis a danger, as Sen (2009) points out so clearly, with ideal proposals in asecond-best world. While earlier the claim was made that ideals matter inmaking judgments about professionalism, nonetheless South African profes-sionals work in non-ideal conditions, as Unabantu Mali’s story illustrates.Universities internationally are also losing sight of social, cultural and intel-lectual objectives as commercial forces increasingly dominate (Collini 2011;Singh 2011). In parallel, professionalism for the public good is losingground, partly because of the ‘logics’ of the market and managerialism, butalso because professionals themselves have not properly defended the ‘soul’of professionalism, tending to prioritize self-interest and a technical-rationalapproach, which has led to a decline in public trust (Sullivan 2005). Claimsfor capabilities-based transformative social change could be dismissed as‘utopian’ or demanding too much of individuals if governments fail to deli-ver on resources and public policies in neo-liberal times. Therefore, howobjective conditions – Sen’s (1999) ‘social arrangements’ – make possible,or create obstacles to, the formation of public-good professional capabilitiesmust be considered. Further, Nussbaum (2000, 2011) reminds us that whilepersonal powers or ‘internal capabilities’ are above all cultivated through
Table 3. Educational arrangements (processes) to form public-good professionals.
Department University conditions
Transformative curriculum; criticalpedagogies; fostering public-goodprofessional ways of being; inclusivedepartmental culture
transformative culture and environment;critical, deliberative and responsible;socially engaged; committed to buildinga just society
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education, nonetheless they require additional support if these powers are todevelop and become effective, especially support from the political world,but also from families and other voluntary organizations and professionalorganizations and work environments.
Certainly, in the South African context there is much evidence in themedia of continuing disillusionment with poor service delivery, includingby professionals, with entrenched poverty, increased inequality and corrup-tion at high levels. Project data made abundantly clear across all groupsthat the legacy of apartheid on the systemic and material base and cultureof South African society is still a considerable obstacle. Related to thislegacy were educational constraints such as the low level of student pre-paredness due to the poor quality of schools, while some of the pressuresfrom home and finances facing students from disadvantaged backgroundswere also a significant hindrance to learning. Other constraints could bespecific to a particular profession, for example law on its own was notcomprehensive enough to work effectively against poverty without statesupport, despite a progressive Bill of Rights. The courts may make radicaldecisions, for example about the right to housing, but these can still beignored by the state in its policies and suffer due to a lack of politicalwill. Some interviewees identified prejudices against black professionals orthe lack of funding for pro-poor NGOs. In general, there was concern withthe increasingly materialistic outlook of students studying the potentiallylucrative professions and across all professions the problem of a braindrain to wealthier countries.
Nonetheless, bleak though this picture may appear, it is still the casethe universities could educate for different social values and norms, onesthat could influence, ‘the freedoms that people enjoy and have reason totreasure’ (Sen 1999, 9). Developing shared norms of public service(broadly understood, as Salais [2010] proposes) can, Sen argues, influencesocial features such as gender equity or the presence or absence of cor-ruption. As he explains, the exercise of freedom is mediated by values(public good or something else), but these values in turn are influencedby public discussions (in professional associations, professionals workingalongside civil society and so forth), which are in turn influenced by par-ticipatory freedoms. These are connected, Sen says, and deserve scrutiny– the PCI tries to capture these connections. Moreover, it opens spacefor debate in a context where there is some room to be hopeful. Mostrecently a newly proposed ANC education policy document suggests thatcommunity service be made compulsory for all graduates in all fields, asit is now for graduates in the health sector (Blaine 2012, 4). For such apublic policy to be effective, professionals oriented to community serviceare required and universities should play their part in educating themwell.
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Phase 4 – a professional capabilities index
Bringing all this together generates a matrix of the influences on the forma-tion of public-good professionals (see Figure 1). Three of the elements arenormative (what ought to be done) but the social constraints are probablyonly contextual in that they describe how things are.
Missing from the heuristic are resource inputs, which could includefinancial, human resources and policy resources (all of which are implied ifnot spelled out explicitly), furthermore resources are inputs at different timesand not a one-off linear input, which is difficult to capture in the matrix.Also missing are the biographies of the individual students. These biographi-cal influences would require further research but for now are assumed toinfluence how each student ‘converts’ (Sen 1999) their resource bundle intoachievements and career choices. Professional education in turn can operateas a conversion factor in the ‘space’ between resources and biographies byforming public-good values. Biographies and choices are not static and willbe shaped by experiences and learning during the study of professional edu-cation – herein lies the responsibility of universities to educate to keep thepublic good in view.
In conclusion
The PCI as a comprehensive outcome, as well as the deliberative process ofits generation, makes a contribution to the literature on the capabilityapproach by suggesting how the ideas might be operationalized in thesphere of educational practice and policy, combining theoretical ideas with
Figure 1. Matrix for Professional Capabilities Index.
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empirical data and dialogue. The Index could be a practical tool for explor-ing a significant aspect of transformation of higher education in the SouthAfrican and perhaps other contexts. Having developed the Index, and in par-ticular the list of public-good professional capabilities, the challenge now isto discuss it further and to see it taken up as a tool for evaluation and devel-opment and as a tool for public higher-education policy. In addition, furtherresearch is needed to look much more closely at individual biographies andpersonal characteristics that may influence, together with higher educationexperiences, the formation of valuable outcomes.
At this stage in South Africa, the Index has been disseminated but is stilluntried. There has been an attempt (Stokes and East 2011) to take up theprofessional-capabilities list in the context of professional education at oneUK university, yielding some interesting results. Stokes and East concludethat the findings of their study are sufficiently promising to support an argu-ment for further research on this topic in the UK higher-education context,involving a larger number of higher education institutions and a larger andmore diverse group of stakeholders, including students and graduates. Theyfound that, overall, the professional-capabilities list was ‘well received’ byUK respondents, who could see its utility. However, the list was alsothought to be complex and ‘not immediately accessible’, while there wereindications that a UK version of the list might be slightly different from thatdrafted in and for South Africa.8
Finally, like democracy itself, public-good professionalism is always inprocess towards an ideal of a society in which professionals value ‘creatingcapabilities’ and creating a society in which capabilities are valued for all(Nussbaum 2011), even in the conditions of a second-best world (Sen2009). The hope is that South African universities embrace their role in pro-ducing public-good professional agents whose personal powers and valueswill enable them to contribute to transformative change in ways which willhelp to bring about a better society and a better world, not least for Unaban-tu Mali’s bereaved family.
AcknowledgementsThe research was funded by ESRC/DfID Award No RES- 67-25-0302. My thanksto members of the research project team and to the two anonymous referees whosethorough comments assisted greatly in revising the paper.
Notes1. It also needs to be said that this should not prescribe lines of inquiry universi-
ties may wish to pursue in producing and disseminating knowledge, or toexpect compliance with policy objectives, or for universities to follow market-led models of development and management, or to limit activities only to thosewith practical outcomes so that training is privileged over education. However,
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professional education is both theoretical, applied and vocational and sits rathermore directly at the nexus of universities and their host societies – we mightthen expect attention both to intellectual discovery and development but also tothe social responsibility that comes with being educated for ‘human understand-ing’ rather than only trained.
2. Nussbaum’s (see 2000, 78–80, for their elaboration) central universal capabili-ties are: (1) Life, (2) Bodily health, (3) Bodily integrity, (4) Senses, imaginationand thought, (5) Emotions, (6) Affiliation, (7) Practical reason, (8) Other spe-cies, (9) Play and (10) Control over one’s environment.
3. Nussbaum in particular has been criticised for the relevance of her list to allcontexts (Robeyns 2003). This issue of list is now fairly well-trodden territoryand is not addressed here but see Walker and Unterhalter (2007). Moreover thePCI is neither canonical, universal nor fixed.
4. From Wolff and De-Shalit we added: Doing good to others, Living in a lawabiding fashion and Understanding the law. In interviews with professionalbodies and NGOs there was broad agreement that all the capabilities wereimportant.
5. The universities were given pseudonyms. Although they may be recognizableto anyone familiar with South African higher education, this is not the sameethically as identifying each university.
6. The research team was led by Melanie Walker and included Monica McLean,Arona Dison and Rosie Vaughan, with additional fieldwork support from PippaSegall and administrative support from Martina Daykin.
7. For a detailed account of all the case studies see Walker et al. (2010).8. Seven capabilities emerged: Knowledge, imagination and practical skills,
Informed vision, Integrity and ethical awareness, Commitment to global citizen-ship, Orientation to social and collective action, Skills to communicate withpeople from all walks of life, Resilience, emotional awareness and Assuranceand confidence.
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