Notions of Quality Education Challenged

If developmental targets are to be met, countries in sub-Saharan Africa will need to recruit, and retain, millions of extra teachers, particularly in remote areas. A new book by Alison Buckler (Faculty of Education and Language Studies / IKD) offers fresh paradigms in this area and will be of special interest to those interested in gender, development and teaching.

Published by Routledge, Quality Teaching and the Capability Approach: Evaluating the Work and Governance of Women Teachers in Rural sub-Saharan Africa explores the conditions of teachers across the world, with a particular focus on female teachers in rural sub-Saharan Africa. Building from Amartya Sen’s capability approach, the book challenges existing notions of quality education and reveals insights into the broader purpose of schooling for rural communities. It concludes by proposing a concept of professional capability and examines female teachers’ agency to achieve this in their classrooms.

Alison previously worked as a Researcher on the award-winning Teacher Education in Sub-Saharan Africa (TESSA) programme, an international consortium concerned with the production and supported use of open educational resources. Drawing on this experience, Quality Teaching and the Capability Approach considers documentary evidence alongside ethnographic research from rural, remote and under-resourced schools in Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and Sudan. In so doing, it looks beyond official portrayals to help readers better understand the reality of the contexts in which teachers work, examining issues of resources, national policy and what 'quality' means in practice.