Melanie Walker 1

Melanie Walker 1

Human development aims to expand people’s capabilities to be and do what they value being and doing. Having knowledge and getting a critically-oriented education are crucial components in forming a good life plan with genuine choices. When we teach the human development and capability approach, we therefore need to keep in mind that our pedagogy ought to be consistent with the core principles of the approach itself. It ought to be both a critical and humanizing pedagogy. An education process that humiliates students or reduces their confidence as they learn about human development ideas would certainly not be appropriate for enabling transformation and the expansion of capabilities.

The crucial point is that we should not separate what we teach from the way we teach it. Who is teaching, who is being taught, and how they are being taught matter as much as what is being taught. If we value democracy and gender equality, we should foster them in the way we teach. We want our students to experience democracy and equality in their learning experience, not inequality or injustice.

The ideas of critical educators like Paulo Freire are particularly helpful. For Freire (1970, 1985), teaching and learning are both political and cultural processes. The political nature of education is evident in the values and perspectives teachers and students bring with them to a learning situation, in the way teaching and learning occur, in the forms of assessment and evaluation conducted, in the funding arrangements for education, in what appears or is left out of the curriculum, in the justifications provided for education, in the reading and writing completed or recommended, in the value placed on credentials and qualifications, in the language of instruction, and in government policies that frame the learning process as a whole. The cultural processes of education are meant to foster freedom. Thus, teaching and The ideas of critical educators like Paulo Freire are particularly helpful. For Freire (1970, 1985), teaching and learning are both political and cultural processes. The political nature of education is evident in the values and perspectives teachers and students bring with them to a learning situation, in the way teaching and learning occur, in the forms of assessment and evaluation conducted, in the funding arrangements for education, in what appears or is left out of the curriculum, in the justifications provided for education, in the reading and writing completed or recommended, in the value placed on credentials and qualifications, in the language of instruction, and in government policies that frame the learning process as a whole. The cultural processes of education are meant to foster freedom. Thus, teaching and

Central to Freire’s pedagogy is the idea of becoming more fully human. We are ‘beings of praxis’ and hence capable of transforming the world. This firmly links his pedagogical philosophy to that of human development. For Freire, we humanize ourselves when we engage in critical, dialogical praxis. We dehumanize ourselves and others when we actively prevent this. Knowledge and knowing is never complete, and both arise from dialogue and engagement with the messy realities of life.

Freire distinguished between what he called ‘banking education’ and ‘problem-posing education’ (see Box 9.8). The former is oppressive, involving the transmission or pouring of ideas into blank and docile containers, which then reproduce these ideas in an uncritical fashion. Criticism and questioning are suppressed and alternative ways of understanding the world actively discouraged. Learners are passive spectators rather than participants in their own learning process. In contrast, problem-posing education involves learners as agents with a dialogical and critical approach to education. A culture of silence thus excludes and oppresses, because speech/voice and freedom are intimately connected. Emancipation becomes the process of finding one’s own voice and this can occur only in conditions of justice and equality (even if this justice and equality is only possible in the classroom). Freirean pedagogy builds on and from the experiences of learners (although not uncritically) and welcomes questions, debate and discussion. A critical mode of being is the key to pedagogical purpose and practice. Students learn to ask questions, not just to answer them. Education is something students do, rather than something that is done to them. This means that dialogue is central to learning.

Freire’s work strongly underpins what is called ‘critical pedagogy’ (see Kincheloe 2004; Leistnya et al 1996). Critical pedagogy broadly draws on critical theory and a structural critique of formal education as a site where capitalism and its values and social relations are constantly being reproduced, but where proposals for resistance and change can also be compellingly made. Critical pedagogy argues that education is a site of symbolic control, where our understanding, our disposition to learn, and the formation of our identities are shaped and influenced by the culture of teaching and learning practices. The pedagogical is thus about the formation of learner identities and how we learn to see ourselves in relation to each other and to the rest of the world. We might learn to be ethical and compassionate or uncaring; we might learn to exercise knowledge to help others or to harm them; we might learn to respect diversity or fear those who are different from us. The key question is: what do I as a human being become as a consequence of what I experience in learning about human development? For teachers of human development, the essential question is therefore: what kinds of human beings do I hope my students might one day become?

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AN INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN DEVELOPMENT AND CAPABILITY APPROACH

Critical pedagogy pays careful attention to history, power and participation in educational settings. It is centred on critical thinking, which involves being able to interrogate the assumptions about life and power relations we routinely take for granted, to exert more conscious control over our lives, and to raise questions about the moral relevance of our actions. By challenging us to recognize and critique undemocratic social practices and the global relations that produce and sustain them, we are in position to engender transformation. For example, students and learners would have the knowledge to critique how race, gender and other forms of inequality and oppression are made to seem normal in the world.

Critical pedagogy is power-sensitive. It offers a framework to examine power and domination in education and uncover its selection and sorting functions. It critiques not just educational hurdles to educational success and agency, but also how these educational barriers are shaped by social, economic and political obstacles to social justice and democracy. It sees identity as fluid, contingent, dynamic and in-process, so that change is always possible and new identities might be produced when new opportunities (or freedoms) are opened. It is always evolving; it is not a pedagogy that we do or achieve but one that we continue struggling towards, always in committed dialogue with others.

A human development approach to pedagogy ought then to be a form of critical pedagogy, connecting education to the world beyond the classroom and the educational institution because conditions in society, such as forms of inequality, penetrate education. Our pedagogy should therefore foster reflection on freedom and inequalities, and pay attention to global processes that affect us all. We should do human development and social justice, and not simply learn about it. This entails that the classroom environment be one where students are able to influence activities. It also involves a high degree of self-regulation by students, and some degree of encouragement so they learn to take risks in their own learning experience.

For Freire, therefore, education ought to be ‘the practice of freedom’. In that context, pedagogy has three key features: learners should be active participants and co-constructors of knowledge; learning should be meaningful to the learners; and learning should have a critical focus. Thus learners are engaged co-constructors of knowledge itself. This includes attention to history, participation and mutual engagement, connecting experiences to the learning encounter and a process of inquiry, critical dialogue and dissent. As Freire explains, through praxis, individuals realize their full humanity. Praxis is the reflexive relationship of theory and practice which involves acting with others to transform the world. It is the act of reflectively constructing and re- constructing the social (and educational) world. Knowledge (even knowledge about human development) therefore cannot simply be transmitted or written onto ‘blank slates’, but develops through the involvement of learners in invention and reinvention, and through curious, imaginative and hopeful inquiry.

APPENDIX 1

Other pedagogical features might include the importance of hope and love in teaching and learning, so that students might aspire to decent futures for themselves and the rest of the world. Thus, Freire (1995, p3) wrote that teachers ought to ‘unveil opportunities for hope, no matter what the obstacles might be’, fostering our confidence to pursue our aspirations. Furthermore, in learning about human development in schools, colleges and universities, we acquire knowledge about human development not just for the sake of having knowledge, but to use this understanding in ways that might meaningfully improve the world in which we live.

In the human development approach to pedagogy, teachers become critical and reflective intellectuals. They have a questioning frame of mind, are open to learning from their students and other teachers, and are also active citizens. As critical intellectuals, teachers ought to be involved in social justice struggles to build a better world. Such struggles may be quiet, often unnoticed, forms of intellectual subversion, or they may be more public protests. By doing human development pedagogies in their classrooms – pedagogy for and pedagogy as human development – teachers enable students to experience democratic, critical and compassionate ways of thinking and being. In a human development classroom, diverse identities would have equal value: a student would not be undermined or overlooked simply because she was female, disabled, or old, or from a different cultural, national or racial group.

A human development approach to pedagogy should also pay attention to students having specific pedagogic rights (Bernstein, 2000). Without these, students may not develop the capabilities to participate equally and effectively in society and to function well in a democracy (Walker, 2006). These rights would further direct our attention to the normality of unjust hierarchies, where students might not be recognized as potential partners in the pedagogic process.

Bernstein therefore argues for three integrated pedagogic rights: the first is the right to ‘enhancement,’ which involves critical understanding and seeing new possibilities; this right is the key to the formation of confidence and agency. The second right is that of ‘inclusion’, which is the right to be included socially, intellectually, culturally and personally – which is fundamental to social exchange. The third is ‘participation’ in shaping and transforming political outcomes or, in other words, the right to ‘civic practice’. These pedagogic rights allow each person to realize his full potential in acquiring knowledge. Like any other rights, pedagogic rights could be expanded through pedagogical and social arrangements which secure these rights.

A focus on rights directs us to the process aspects of freedom, which include the types of pedagogical processes we are specifically concerned with here. Sen (2004) is himself clear that, while capability is important for evaluating the opportunity aspect of freedom, it cannot deal adequately with its process aspect because capabilities point to individual advantage but do not necessarily tell us about the fairness of the (pedagogical) processes involved, or about the rights-based freedom of each learner to pedagogical processes that are equitable.

AN INTRODUCTION TO HUMAN DEVELOPMENT AND CAPABILITY APPROACH

In summary, the fundamental elements of a human development pedagogy would be constituted by: theoretical ideas from Freire and critical pedagogy, a pedagogical practice focusing on the formation of each student’s capabilities, and pedagogic rights.

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1 Melanie Walker is Professor of Higher Education at the University of Nottingham and Publications Editor of the Human Development and Capability Association.