This book focuses on professional practice capability development in workplace contexts. It is built around the idea of workplace learning spaces being like crucibles in which many human, material and ephemeral factors are brought together through interactive exchanges of purpose and energy. A Crucible Model for Professional Development is presented and explored as a means for better understanding workplace learning as a place and vehicle for learning for professional practice. The power and potential for such learning spaces resembles the power of the apparently simple bowl of a crucible. However, when combined with the fire of enthusiasm for learning and teaching, and the rich learning resources and opportunities these settings can provide, the resultant catalytic reactions of professional growth and development can be both rewarding and outstanding. This book challenges contemporary models of workplace learning and their ability to develop a broad range of professional practice capabilities. The authors examine the nature and context of workplace learning in relation to capability development, explore the potential of the Crucible Model to enhance workplace learning and provide narratives of professional practice capability development in action. The discussions generate a range of implications and recommendations for workplace learning and capability development relevant to workplace learning educators and supervisors, academic educators, practitioners, students and those with the power to shape the future direction of workplace learning for professional practice. We invite you as readers of this book to consider the themes we have presented to reflect on your own experiences (whether as a student, workplace learning educator/supervisor, academic educator or a practitioner seeking to enhance your own capability development) to re-imagine workplace learning pedagogy and in so doing harness the potency of workplace learning experiences to develop professional practitioners capable of flourishing in and constructively contributing to 21st Century professional practice contexts.

Governments play a major role in the development process, and constantly introduce reforms and policies to achieve developmental objectives. Many of these interventions have limited impact, however; schools get built but children don't learn, IT systems are introduced but not used, plans are written but not implemented. These achievement deficiencies reveal gaps in capabilities, and weaknesses in the process of building state capability. This book addresses these weaknesses and gaps. It starts by providing evidence of the capability shortfalls that currently exist in many countries, showing that many governments lack basic capacities even after decades of reforms and capacity building efforts. The book then analyses this evidence, identifying capability traps that hold many governments back - particularly related to isomorphic mimicry (where governments copy best practice solutions from other countries that make them look more capable even if they are not more capable) and premature load bearing (where governments adopt new mechanisms that they cannot actually make work, given weak extant capacities). The book then describes a process that governments can use to escape these capability traps. Called PDIA (problem driven iterative adaptation), this process empowers people working in governments to find and fit solutions to the problems they face. The discussion about this process is structured in a practical manner so that readers can actually apply tools and ideas to the capability challenges they face in their own contexts. These applications will help readers devise policies and reforms that have more impact than those of the past.

This book develops a philosophical framework for selecting goals for development purposes. This inclusive and democratic framework integrates a variety of resources including philosophical theory, empirical analysis, stakeholder deliberations, local knowledge, and advice from development experts. The author contends that we must provide good reasons and arguments in order to justify a particular development agenda. That is, we need to ask why we choose certain kinds of development goals over others, why we include certain agents in the selection process and not others, and why we select goals through one method rather than another. In response to these questions, the author argues that development should aim at expanding people's capabilities and functionings. Capabilities and functionings--capabilities that have been realized--tell us what people are actually able to do and be with their resources, goods, and formal freedoms. He advances the view that local stakeholders should have more authority in deciding what a development agenda looks like. This claim to local authority in development can be interpreted both as a claim to political authority and expert authority. Finally, the author argues that ad hoc, foundational, procedural, and mixed (multi-stage) methods need to be synthesized in order to select the best capabilities and functionings for development. The Capability Approach in Practice provides a philosophical and systematic approach to setting development agendas. It is an important contribution to the literature on the capability approach and development ethics, which will appeal to a broad range of scholars within philosophy and development studies.

If a country’s Gross Domestic Product increases each year, but so does the percentage of its people deprived of basic education, health care, and other opportunities, is that country really making progress? If we rely on conventional economic indicators, can we ever grasp how the world’s billions of individuals are really managing? In this powerful critique, Martha Nussbaum argues that our dominant theories of development have given us policies that ignore our most basic human needs for dignity and self-respect. For the past twenty-five years, Nussbaum has been working on an alternate model to assess human development: the Capabilities Approach. She and her colleagues begin with the simplest of questions: What is each person actually able to do and to be? What real opportunities are available to them? The Capabilities Approach to human progress has until now been expounded only in specialized works. Creating Capabilities, however, affords anyone interested in issues of human development a wonderfully lucid account of the structure and practical implications of an alternate model. It demonstrates a path to justice for both humans and nonhumans, weighs its relevance against other philosophical stances, and reveals the value of its universal guidelines even as it acknowledges cultural difference. In our era of unjustifiable inequity, Nussbaum shows how—by attending to the narratives of individuals and grasping the daily impact of policy—we can enable people everywhere to live full and creative lives.

For over three decades, the capability approach proposed and developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum has had a distinct impact on development theories and approaches because it goes beyond an economic conception of development and engages with the normative aspects of development. This book explores the new frontiers of the capability approach and its links to human development in three main areas. First, it delves into the philosophical foundations of the approach, re-examining its links to concepts of common good, collective agency and epistemic diversity. Secondly, it addresses its 'operational frontier', aiming to give inclusive explanations of some of the most advanced methods available for capability researchers. Thirdly, it offers a wide range of the applications of this approach, as carried out by a mix of renowned capability scholars and researchers from different disciplines. This broad interdisciplinary range includes the areas of human and sustainable development, inequalities, labour markets, education, special needs, cities, urban planning, housing, social capital and happiness studies, among others.

Globally, universities are the subject of public debate and disagreement about their private benefits or public good, and the key policy vehicle for driving human capital development for competitive knowledge economies. Yet what is increasingly lost in the disagreements about who should pay for university education is a more expansive imaginary which risks being lost in reductionist contemporary education policy. This is compounded by the influences on practices of students as consumers, of a university education as a private benefit and not a public good, of human capital outcomes over other graduate qualities, and of unfettered markets in education. Policy reductionism comes from a narrow vision of the activities, products, and objectives of the University and a blinkered vision of what is a knowledge society. Human Development and Capabilities, therefore, imaginatively applies a theoretical framework to universities as institutions and social practices from human development and the capability approach, attempting to show how universities might advance equalities rather than necessarily widen them, and how they can contribute to a sustainable and democratic society. Picking through the capability approach for human development, in relation to Universities, this book highlights and explores three main ideas: theoretical insights to advance thinking about human development and higher education Policy implications for the responsibilities and potential contributions of universities in a period of significant global change Operationalising a New Imaginary This fresh take on the work and purpose of the University is essential reading for anyone interested in university education, capability approach and human development; particularly postgraduates, University policy makers, researchers and academics in the field of higher education.

This book provides a unique laboratory of ‘capabilities in practice’ in the Asia-Pacific region. It explores the application of the capability approach in development practice and public policy from a multidisciplinary perspective by bringing together scholars and practitioners from a wide range of disciplinary backgrounds, including development studies, health policy, political science, political theory, political economy, architecture, indigenous studies, urban planning and communication technologies. The first part of the book provides a foundational theoretical framework to introduce the empirical applications of the capability theory in different areas of development practice and public policy in the Asia-Pacific region. This part discusses thorny issues in capability theory and raises the potential for capability theory to lead to new ways of thinking about old problems. The second part discusses the application of the capability approach to intransigent problems of marginalisation and the articulation of public policy in New Zealand and Australia. In particular, this part focuses on the potential implications that a capability-based approach can have on the well-being of indigenous peoples in both countries, as well as children, older renters, and urban dwellers in Australia. The third part elucidates how capability theory is being applied by researchers in the Asia-Pacific region to local issues in developing countries such as Samoa, Vanuatu, Papua New Guinea and Sri Lanka. In doing so, it provides original content to the world market in capability theory by focussing on this often-neglected area of scholarship. As a whole, this volume offers a unique and innovative scrutiny of a multifaceted capability-based analysis of development practice and public policy. The scope and breadth of this volume advance the application of the capability approach and offer an indispensable resource to scholars, researchers, policy makers and policy practitioners interested in the theoretical insights and practical implications of the capability approach.