Higher Education Pedagogies: A Capabilities Approach

This book sets out to generate new ways of reflecting ethically about the purposes and values of contemporary higher education in relation to agency, learning, public values and democratic life, and the pedagogies which support these. It offers an alternative to human capital theory and the emphasis on the economic returns of education in higher education, arguing for intrinsic as much as instrumental goods. It frames these issues using key ideas from the human capability approach, developed by economist Amartya Sen and philosopher Martha Nussbaum, as a rich resource for thinking about higher education and shows how this moves us to a criterion of justice as a value in higher education. It places human flourishing, human dignity and students as human beings at its centre. It takes up the value Sen attributes to education in the capability approach, and puts the approach demonstrates its relevance for higher education.