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The Reality Notebook
The Agricultural Family School, teaching for wellbeing and the graduates’ wellbeing
Master’s thesis for the Master International Development Studies Author: Silvia van der Wal – 10510958
silviavanderwal@gmail.com Supervisor: Xavier Bonal Second reader: Jacobijn Olthof Date: December 31 2014
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Abstract
We are facing major contemporary challenges concerning agriculture, environmental issues and rural livelihoods Education that stimulates sustainable forms of development is needed and conventional education is largely failing in this sense. This thesis examines the potential of a pedagogy as applied at the Agricultural Family School, Olivânia, Brazil, to stimulate positive development. The envisioned development are understood as a form of human emancipation and environmental sustainability. The question posed is: How does the Pedagogy of Alternation contribute to its graduates’ acquisition of capabilities and which impact does that have on their wellbeing and the environment they live in. To answer this question mixed methods are used. The approach is overall anthropological and combines: participative observation in school, in the community and in the households, open interviews structured interviews, surveys, Participatory Research sessions. The main findings are generally positive. On intrapersonal level it stimulates a peoples self worth, on interpersonal level it stimulates social relations and on the instrumental teachings increase the possibilities for the graduates to succeed both in rural and urban settings. However, the positive impact in these areas does not seem to suffice to inspire a form of human emancipation and environmental sustainability that goes beyond restrictive contextual structures.
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Acknowledgements
From the moment that I landed in the capital of the State Espírito Santo and took a cab to the place where I was going to start my fieldwork, I was overloaded with kindness and teachings. The cabdriver was the first of many to happily share his life story and vision with me. He grew up on the countryside and only saw the beauty and potential of it after he left. That someone from Amsterdam came there to see what the Brazilian countryside had to teach us all amazed him. It is hard to explain how honoured I felt every time people trusted me with their stories. After all, I arrived as a stranger with empty hands, full of questions, why would they help me? Still, they always did. I am more than grateful to all who shared their houses, food and precious stories with me. In their modesty they did not see how great their gifts were.
Father Firmino was the first to explain to me what the Pedagogy of Alteration was. While he brought that story to life, I remember thinking: ‘how can all this charisma, love and inspiration fit in such a tiny man?’ It is because of his efforts to introduce me to the reality of the valley with the passion and patience probably only Jesuit priests have, that I was able to enter the field with a healthy portion of faith and with the communities’ support. The conversations with him were always inspiring. He also brought me into contact with Rogerio Caliari, a professor who has been asking similar questions about the Pedagogy of Alternation for decades and was glad to help to think about how to set up my research.
The first community to welcome me with open arms was that of São João do Garrafão, high in the mountains of Espírito Santo’s inlands. The story going around about these people is that the deceptions and hardship they went through had turned them into cold people. What I encountered was overwhelming hospitality, kindness and curiosity.
Later, in the valley of Corindiba, where I “intruded” peoples’ lives, wanting to know everything, I was received with pure goodwill and generosity again. By everyone, and yet, I would like to mention some people specifically. While my lack of devotion was already being tested among devoted people in the state called ‘Holy Ghost’, I met a woman who is little short of a saint. Candinha offered me her house on the countryside while she had just met me. Her generous, caring and strong way of being inspired me for the kind of person I want to be.
Then, in school I start in the kitchen where Irene and Aparecida gave me a special place, where they always made sure I would have good food, my coffee without sugar and everything with a portion of humour on the side. Then in the secretariat Assunta was like a walking encyclopaedia to me. She knew where every single student and graduate was, and how I could get to them. The teachers opened
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their classrooms to me, shared their inspiring visions, as well as their preoccupations and insecurities. Among them, Isvenca, Givaldo, Fabia and Carla1 went beyond that, inviting me into their homes, into
their lives. The conversations with them are precious for this research as well as for me personally. So are those with the students and former students, who were always willing to talk about anything. The respect they had for me as a researcher who came to understand their reality opened the door for many amazing dialogues. I like to believe it was in these dialogues that the most valuable results of the research where created – for the research, for me personally and for themselves.
Back in Amsterdam, everything that seemed so clear and relevant in the field was not that simple to translate into this thesis. Discussions with Xavier, fellow students and friends, who always listened patiently and showed me different perspectives, were what guided me through thoughts, theory and data when I felt lost. But above all I want to thank Jacobijn, Jeroen, Maartje, Lisa and Maria who practically pulled me through the last moments, when I had lost all faith in my own capabilities.
Each person that I met passed along different lessons. Together they helped me accomplish the school’s main objective, namely to be conscious about your own capacity to transform your reality. Their faith in a better future and their perception about their own responsibility gave me new hope for education for the Brazilian countryside.
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List of Acronyms
BRIC Brazil Russia India China (An acronym referring to these countries deemed to be at a similar stage of newly advanced economic development)
CA Capability Approach
CFR Casa Família Rural (Rural Family House)
EFA Escola Família Agrícola (Agricultural Family School)
EFAO Escola Família Agrícola Olivânia (the first Agricultural Family school in Brazil)
EFASJG Escola Família Agrícola São João do Garrafão (shool where exploratory research was conduted)
ENEM Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio (National Exam for High schools) ES Espírito Santo, the state
GDP Gross Domestic Product
HDI Human Development Index
IBGE Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (Brazilia Institute of Geography and Statistics)
IDAF Instituto de Defesa Agropecoaria e Florestal do Estado do Espírito Santo (Institute of Agricultural and Forest Protection of the State of Espírito Santo)
INCAPER Instituto Capixaba de Pesquisa, Assistencia Técnica e Extensão Rural (Institute for Research, Technical Support and Rural Extension for the State of Espírito Santo)
INCRA Instituto Nacional de Colonização e Reforma Agrícola
MEPES Movimento de Educação Promocional do Espírito Santo (Promotional Education Movement of the State of Espírito Santo)
MFR Maisons Famíliales Rurales (Rural Family Houses)
MST Movimento Social dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra PRA Participatory Rural Appraisal
PRONAF
Programa Nacional de Fortalecimento da Agricultural Famíliar (National Program for the Strengthening of Family-‐based Agriculture)
ProUni Programa Universidade Para Todos (Program University for Everyone) UFES Universidade Federal do Espírito Santo (Federal University of Espírito Santo) WeD Wellbeing in Developing Countries Research Group based at the University of Bath
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List of figures
Figure 1: Conceptual scheme 20
Figure2: Mapping views of sustainable development 28
Figure 3: Map literacy rate in Espírito Santo 34
List of tables
Table 1: Research methods 23
Table 2: Pedagogical tools 46
Table 3: Translation PRA wellbeing 59
Table 4: Graduates and their occupations 63
Table 5: Graduates’ dreams when still in school 69
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Index
Abstract 2
Acknowledgements 3
List of Acronyms 5
List of figures 6
List of tables 6
Introduction 9
1 Theoretical framework 15
1.1 Approaching wellbeing: the capabilities approach and the wellbeing approach 15
1.2 Linking capabilities and education 17
1.3 Paulo Freire and transformative education 18
1.4 Conceptual scheme 19
2. Methodology 21
2.1 Research design 21
2.2 Reflections and ethical considerations 26
3 The Context 28
Rural development and education in Brazil 28
3.1 Defining sustainable development 28
3.2 Rural development in Brazil 30
3.3 Rural education and development: between deforming and transforming 34
3.4 Zooming in: the local context 36
4 The education Fout!Bladwijzer niet gedefinieerd.
4.1 About how it is applied Fout!Bladwijzer niet gedefinieerd.
4.2 About how it is received Fout!Bladwijzer niet gedefinieerd.
5 The graduates Fout!Bladwijzer niet gedefinieerd.
5.1 About the graduates; how they are doing and how they feel about that Fout!Bladwijzer niet gedefinieerd.
5.2 About how what the graduates do relates to their EFA educationFout!Bladwijzer niet gedefinieerd.
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6.1 About learning what to appreciate 73
6.2 About the impact on human emancipation and sustainable development 75
6.3 Recommendations for the school 79
6.4 Further research 80
References 81
Appendix 86
Appendix 1 Operationalization 86
Appendix 2: Interview guide 88
Appendix 3: Survey 90
Appendix 4: Visualizing the PRA sessions 94
Appendix 5: Visualizing the school 97
Appendix 5: Dreams when they were still in school Fout!Bladwijzer niet gedefinieerd.
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Introduction
O caderno da realidade in Portuguese, translated the reality notebook, is a kind of diary kept by students in Agricultural Family Schools in Brazil. It is a simple notebook for them to register their reality in that travels with them from school to home and back. It is one of the ways these students are stimulated to reflect on who they are, what they do and what that means for how they want to develop. The reality notebook is one of the pedagogical instruments in this rural education system in Brazil. The concept of taking experiences and knowledge from a child growing up on the countryside and developing those through reflection is key to the education’s pedagogy.
The Escolas Família Agrícolas (Agricultural Family Schools, EFAs) are schools that seek to instigate consciousness of their student’s ability to transform reality. Through the Pedagogy of Alternation (PA) the EFAs intend to meet the needs of the peasants and incapacitate them to improve their lives, without leaving the countryside. Popular knowledge that emerged from the field through history is the basis for reflection. It combines rural high school education and agricultural vocational education with the aim to enhance their students’ capacities and knowledge relevant for rural life. In this thesis I explore the impact this school has on the lives their graduates live.
The roots of the education can be traced back to the crisis on the French countryside in the early 1930s. The rural population was moving to cities in large numbers, especially the young people, and the countryside was getting emptier and its population older. A small group of unionized farmers that worried about the future of their children and that of their farms decided that a different type of education was needed to prevent their sons from leaving. The concern was that even if their children would end up studying agriculture in a university, by the time they finished school they would be alienated from the rural lifestyle and practical knowledge, for in their young years they would have spent every weekday in school benches learning about everything but agriculture. The farmers approached a priest in their community with the request to educate their sons in a way that would give them the opportunity to develop without distancing from rural life.
Collectively they thought of a way to combine practical and theoretical learning in a way that would enable the students to have better lives on the countryside.2 The parents and the union were
2 The main theoretical influences were the ‘New Pedagogy’, ‘Active Pedagogy’ and educators such as Rudolf Steiner, Maria Montessori, Célestin Freinet, and John Dewey (Gimonnet 2008:132).
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not only the ones initiating the education; they were also the ones to run the school.3 This is how the
ideology, that is still fundamental to the Pedagogy of Alternation (PA), was born.
Once a month the students spent a week in the priest’s cabin that was transformed into a school, the rest of the month they spent at home with their family. The experiences, knowledge, skills and questions related to their daily lives were taken into the school, where this knowledge was developed trough reflection. Students took this new knowledge back home, experimented with it and returned with new experiences and questions. The essence of the PA lies in the alternation between those two spaces.
This first school, founded in 1937, was called Maison Familiale et Rurale (MFR). It was under this name that the PA started to spread through France. The slogan was ‘réussir autrement’ and as the system started proving the potential in ‘succeeding differently’ it was also adopted in Italy in 1961, after which it started to spread internationally. First in Italy, a decade later it started spreading throughout Europe, followed by South America, then the Caribbean Islands, Polynesia, Asia and Canada (Gimonet 1999).
Two decades after the crisis on the French countryside, the Brazilian rural population was faced with similar problems. There was little hope for innovation and development. The State had largely neglected rural education; Jesuit priests had partially filled up that gap in Espírito Santo. It was a conventional middle school, until one of the priests realized that the education they were offering was not appropriate for the type of life people were living. That priest, Humberto Pietogrande, started to search for an education system that would fit its student’s reality. His search led him to the agricultural family schools in Italy, where they had been functioning since the beginning of the sixties. He adopted the core of the education: the Pedagogy of Alternation.
Research rationale
In theory the relation between this pedagogy and sustainable development is undeniably strong, as the human emancipation and environmental sustainability have been central to the PA since the very beginning. Which is probably why the relationship with sustainable development has often been a focus in research about the EFAs (see for example Amaral (2002), Caliari (2002), Sandri (2004), Almada (2005), Araújo (2005)).
3 In Brazil the union and the parents did not manage the education. Instead, the Promotional Education Movement of the state of Espírito Santo (MEPES) manages the EFAs. MEPES is a philanthropic institution, founded in 1968 by Humberto Pietrogrande. The promotion the institutions’ name refers to is about promoting the human being on the countryside in a holistic manner. Since its foundation the institution divides their activities in four fields: education, social action, healthcare and exchange programs. Education is MEPES’s main focus but it is considered to be a part of a larger development project, not as something that can stand on its own. All fields are believed to be essential to fulfil the organizations’ main goal of developing in a way that socially uplifts the lives of people living in rural areas.
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However, those studies mostly adopt the definition of positive development as defined by the PA. As a result the existing literature is mainly focused on the pedagogy itself and to what extent it realizes its own objectives. Those objectives are chiefly limited to local rural development and therefore largely disregard the students that do not go on to lead rural lives. The question what the pedagogy of alternation brings its graduates that decide to live urban lives was still unexamined in literature about EFAs. It is a question that does not correspond with the schools’ objectives, but it does correspond with its students’ reality. Therefore it is relevant in the context of this study that ultimately seeks to answer if and how this education can be considered as a development model. For that reason I broaden the traditional focus by including urban graduates in the research. Leaving the purely rural focus behind, the question comes to be about human emancipation in a more comprehensive way.
Based on the idea that the conventional development policies and practices, which have the tendency to prioritise activities that minimise or respond to harm, are not sufficient when we think about education, I chose an approach that focuses on the positive promotion of goods instead (Thin 2009:2). This research focuses with the intention to find the strengths of the PA and its potential as a development project with the power to support people in developing capabilities for lifelong happiness and citizenship. Therefore I draw on the wellbeing approach (as developed by the WeD group, but more about that in the subsequent chapter).
This holistic perspective is also chosen so that the research can contribute to the question about the type of knowledge and capabilities needed for positive development in a broader sense. While development cooperation, governments, or maybe virtually everyone seems to agree that education is one of the most important preconditions for a better world, there is hardly any agreement about the content and form education should have to lead to positive development.
The urgency of our contemporary challenges concerning agriculture, environmental issues and global social inequality is becoming widely acknowledged (Stephens et. Al. 2008). Though these issues are all interconnected and ultimately affect everyone, the urgency is strongly reflected in rural livelihoods. With the growth of the world population, it becomes increasingly critical to be innovative about how to provide primary agricultural products in a socially and environmentally sustainable way. Without new solutions for current problems facing rural livelihoods, new exodus towards already burdened urban areas become more probable (Kingsbury et al. 2008:228). Education that stimulates more sustainable forms of development has significant potential to influence society positively through different mechanisms, but conventional education is largely failing in this sense (Stephens et. Al. 2008).
With regard to Brazilian rural education these issues are as relevant as can be. Brazil is often pictured as a success story, but there are many questions about the sustainability of the country’s
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explosive growth. In terms of economic development Brazil has achieved impressive successes during the past few decades4. But although the poorest have been pulled and pushed above the poverty line 56, there is still a compact upper-‐middle class, which monopolizes opportunities and power; a large
part of the population is excluded from political processes and the growing prosperity. The roots of Brazilian inequality seem hard to eradicate. This inequality is also reflected in the education system; therefore education often reproduces inequality more than it opens up new opportunities (Caliari 2002: 59, McCawan 2006a & 2007).
In terms of environmental sustainability the Brazilian story is all but a fairy tale. Major problems regarding environmental issues include: deforestation, waste disposal and air pollution7. The large-‐
scale commercial agriculture system that has been developed plays an important role in the domestic economic growth and cannot be separated from the widespread destruction of the ecosystem and environmental degradation (Martinelli et al. 2010:431).
In this era of rapid change, it is basically unpredictable what kind of future we face, even with all the knowledge that has been accumulated through history (Chambers 1991:1). The growth of the number of humans and the advances in technology also offers possibilities for beneficial innovations. The development of our society is increasingly dependent on creativity and inventiveness resulting from both individual and collective intelligence (Mulford 2007, Fadel et al. 2007). Given that we cannot know what kind of innovation will be needed, we don’t have prêt-‐à-‐porter packages to pass on to next generations, it is of fundamental importance to rethinking the role of rural education that enables sustainable development and increases the individual’s freedom to shape their future. In this thesis the potential of a rural education system in Brazil to contribute to these issues is examined.
4 With the status of the seventh wealthiest economy in the world the BRIC country is largely considered a story of success (Robert Kapel 2011:1).
5 With a Gini coefficient of 54.7 in 2009 (WORLD BANK 2013)
6 In 2005 30.8% of Brazilians lived under the national poverty line, in 2009 21,4% (WORLDBANK 2013). See for example Zero Hunger project (FOME ZERO 2012) and the family grant (BOLSA FAMÍLIA 2012) for pro poor policies.
7 Something we can clearly see in the Happy Planet Index for example. In this index that combines a countries ecological footprint, life expectancy and experienced wellbeing, Brazil is ranked twenty-‐first out of 151 countries. However, this is boosted by the positive outcomes of experienced wellbeing. In the ranking of ecological footprint Brazil is number 90 (HAPPY PLANET INDEX 2013).
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Research question
With that said, I pose the following research question:
How does the Pedagogy of Alternation contribute to its graduates’ acquisition of capabilities and which impact does that have on their wellbeing and the environment they live in?
A brief specification of the research question: the context of this question is the South of the state Espírito Santo, Brazil. The Pedagogy of Alternation then refers to the form of pedagogy as it is practiced in EFA’s in this valley. And the graduates in question are young graduates from the EFA that grew up in the valley where the school is located and graduated between 2003 and 2010. With ‘wellbeing’ I refer to a holistic understanding of living well and feeling good about that. A one-‐sentence explanation does not suffice to explain this complex concept. I will elaborate on it extensively in the subsequent chapter.
Sub questions:
1) What is the Pedagogy of Alternation? This first question encompasses the history of the pedagogy, the underlying ideology and how it is taught and how it is received
2) How is the wellbeing of graduates of the Agricultural Family School? This second question asks for an analysis of the status quo regarding the graduates’ wellbeing.
3) How do the capabilities that were taught relate to the lives the graduates live? Here I search for connections between what was learned and the way people are able to live because of it.
Thesis outline
The first subsequent chapter is the theoretical framework; it describes the major theories that form the fundament for this research. Starting with capabilities and wellbeing and how I chose to approach these huge and complex concepts. Then I go into how these concepts relate to education and how Paulo Freire offers interesting insights about the relation between the concepts. The second chapter is where I describe the methodology.
Chapter three is a sketch of the context. While the context is ultimately a global one, I focus on rural development in Brazil, especially with regard to education. After this quite broad
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contextualization I zoom in to the valley where the research has been conducted. These political, educational and local contexts together encompass the challenges and opportunities the school, its students and former students are facing.
In the fourth chapter the findings are analysed. To answer the first question about the PA I start out describing the ideology behind the education. Then I look into the way the pedagogy is translated into practice; analysing the pedagogical instruments and how it is taught. To end with how the students receive the education. Then in chapter five the lives the graduates live are described as analyzed through the wellbeing perspective. In the last part of this analytical chapter I go into how the way the graduates live relates to the education they had.
In this discussion the role of the EFA with regard to the enhancement of their students wellbeing is further examined. Finally, some conclusions can be made based on the findings and discussions.
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1 Theoretical framework
1.1 Approaching wellbeing: the capabilities approach and the wellbeing approach
Given that the main aim of the research is to understand the relation between the Agricultural Family School and its graduates’ wellbeing, it is essential to come to a comprehensive conception of wellbeing. As everything from ones financial situation to affection can affect how happy a person feels, wellbeing is a notoriously difficult notion to conceptualize (Blackmore 2009:4 & White 2009:3). Being well and happy means different things for different people and depends on various factors – all which are very different in nature. As a result the attempt to translate holistic understandings of how people value their lives into elegant theories has a risk of resulting in fuzziness. None the less, there have been various scholars developing structured multidimensional ways to understand what it is people need to ‘be well’8. For the purpose of this research I draw on two approaches that seem helpful in
capturing the complexity of wellbeing.
The first is the capability approach (CA), which was created by Amartya Sen as an approach to welfare economics that moved away from the narrow utilitarian approach (See Sen 1992; 1997; 2000). “The capability approach derives from a particular clearly articulated normative framework and is situated within well-‐developed debates about justice and equality that go beyond simply personal or collective processes of meaning making (Walker & Unterhalter 2007:5).” The three core concepts are functionings, capabilities and agency. Functionings are activities and states of being a person may value, for example, being in good health or having good education. Capabilities are the various combinations of functionings a person is able to achieve. Accordingly, capabilities reflect the freedom one has to achieve those valuable doings and beings; the socially available opportunities for valuable functionings. The set of capabilities define the substantive freedom to live one type of life or another. Agency is the freedom necessary in the processes to achieve the things that lead to a type of life worth valuing. The core idea is that people’s wellbeing should be considered in terms of capabilities. In this view capabilities are both mean and end objectives for development (Sen 2000).
The aspect of the CA that is of greatest value to this thesis is in the focus on people’s freedom of choice, their ability to achieve things they value, rather than their income or consumption. This offers space for analysis of both the range of options and choices one has in life and the compilation of reasons to value your life -‐ with attention for social, political and economic aspects (Saito 2003, Deneulian & McGregor 2009:1). As the name indicates, it is more of a framework for thought than a theory; a normative guideline for the assessment of wellbeing in terms of freedoms. The ‘goodness’ is
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assessed in an open-‐ended way through democratic principles, all built on strong ethical foundations. Another strength is that it places human life centrally, breaking with the tradition to take commodities as the starting point. In doing so, the CA takes a positive perspective; it places the potential and the liberty people have to carry out and realize what they want at the core, as opposed to start out from what people are supposedly missing. The great emphasis on freedom has the advantage that it acknowledges social and political structures involved in an individual’s freedom to achieve his or her aspirations.
The Wellbeing in Developing Countries Research Group based at the University of Bath (WeD) built further on the trend of widening notions of poverty and human development in general and the CA in particular. “It builds on and advances livelihoods approaches which see people’s economic activity as a complex mix of priorities, strategies, influences, activities and alliances which draw on a range of material and social resources” (White 2009:3). The purpose of the WeD was to develop a coherent conceptual and methodological framework for the understanding of social, cultural and psychological construction of wellbeing in developing societies. “The definition of wellbeing that was derived was a state of being with others, where human needs are met, where one can act meaningfully to pursue one’s goals, and where one enjoys a satisfactory quality of life” (WeD 2007 in Johnson 2009). Or in White’s more poetical phrasing: ‘Doing Well, Feeling Good’ and ‘Doing Good; Feeling Well’ (2008:15). The Wellbeing approach as developed by the WeD incorporates what people have, what they can do with what they have, and how they think about what they have and can do. The wellbeing approach thus includes the external, more objective factors of welfare as well as the subjective factors (White 2008:5). These aspects are categorised under three dimensions. The material dimension of wellbeing concerns ‘practical welfare and standards of living’. The relational concerns ‘personal and social relations’ and the subjective concerns ‘values, perceptions and experience’ (White, 2008:8).
It is primarily this explicit focus on the relational and the subjective of the wellbeing approach that is so valuable for this thesis. I believe what people feel they can do or can be plays a decisive role for what people will actually be able to be and do. Sen does emphasise the importance of reason, arguing that freedom of reason is needed for true enjoyment of freedom (Sen 2000). However, his interpretation of reason and weak conception and the social sit uncomfortable in this regard9.
Deneulin and McGregor criticize this through the wellbeing perspective: “Somewhat contradictorily, given the emphasis on ‘the reason to value’, the capability approach argues that what matters is the quality of life that people are actually living, defined by its objective conditions [..] and not how they subjectively feel about their lives. This flirts with the problem of accusing the poor of experiencing ‘false
9 See Evans (2002) and Gore (1997) for other discussions about how values and meaning are partially constructed through social processes and should therefore be studied in this light.
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consciousness’ (2009:7).” Deneulin and McGregor argue the constructed meanings are what translate ‘havings’ and ‘doings’ in states of being (2009). As the wellbeing approach takes into account the way meaning is socially and psychologically constructed, for the purpose of this thesis it is helpful to draw on the wellbeing approach to assess achieved freedoms and subjective wellbeing in a balanced way.
1.2 Linking capabilities and education
Thinking in terms of capabilities, specifically for education, opens up possibilities to go beyond the instrumental value of education and individual and collective returns from education (Underhalter et al. 2007). From all different fields in policy, education seems to be the one that is most inherently related to the capability approach. Education can enhance capabilities both through the development of abilities and the broadening of the range of opportunities (Saito 2003: 27). Given that capability expansion is a normative objective, developing education is a part of expanding the capacity to make valued choices in other spheres of life (Underhalter et al. 2007). The usefulness of the capability approach in educational settings lies at the heart of the notion of a capability as a conception that a person is able to develop a reasoned understanding of valued beings and doing. This is a powerful argument in favour of forms of education that provide students with tools for them to explore their own ideas about what it is in life they have reason to value (Walker & Underhalter 2007). It is through this focus on results in terms of freedoms, provided by the capability approach, that what is needed for good education can be defined in a comprehensive way.
A shift in focus stimulated by the approaches is to view education as a process. Instead of
learning outcomes, the attention is on the educational processes that learners engage in. The
emphasis on freedom begs for equity, equality in opportunities and justness –thus going far beyond equality in access. “This allows us to avoid the problematic task of determining specific outcomes, meaning both that educational experiences are not unduly restricted by predefined objectives and that we are not forced to stipulate an arbitrary level of achievement (McCowan 2010:518).” This sits well with the education system to be studied, which also emphasizes the process. The objective for education is brought to another level; the purpose is to let individuals flourish and cultivate humanity. By leaving behind the instrumental view, the attention comes to lie on quality, according to the capability approach this quality is to be judged based on the needs of individuals.
The wellbeing approach is also of great value for the translation of theory into methodology. Where Sen purposefully refuses to narrow down the theory by defining an immutable list, or set, of capabilities because this would deny the potential of democracy and transfigure the applicability of the approach as a theory of evaluation (Sen 2004:78), the WeD provides methodological tools. It does so in a different way than Nussbaum’s list of capabilities, which was created to establish a universal moral standard for assessing ways of life (Jaggar 2006). The WeD instead seeks a way to provide
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methodological tools, with space for adaption to local understandings. They propose a conceptualization of wellbeing with balance between the material, relational and subjective dimensions. As all dimensions are constantly negotiated within the particular social context, wellbeing is defined as a dynamic process of becoming.
1.3 Paulo Freire and transformative education
Paulo Freire was like a protagonist in this research, so let me introduce him properly. Freire was a Brazilian educator who contributed both to development theory and practice in very significant ways. It was even common to describe, what would nowadays be labelled as participatory, bottom-‐up or grassroots approach, as a Freirean approach (Blackburn 2000:3). The pedagogy of liberation, which he developed while educating illiterates in the North-‐East of Brazil, and which he is most well-‐known for, is related to the PA in various ways. I will get to that later, what is of more interest for this section is the theoretical and mostly philosophical approach that Freire took to human development. Freire argues humans have the ontological vocation to become more fully human through reason, which is achieved by reflecting on the dynamics of the world (Freire 1974). The key is to develop awareness about one’s reality and especially the potential to change that reality. In principle everybody has the capacity to grow through such a process, however, ‘the oppressed10’, are restricted in this sense. “In
order for the oppressed to be able to wage the struggle for their liberation, they must perceive the reality of oppression not as a closed world from which there is no exit, but as a limiting situation which they can transform (Freire, 1972, p. 31).” These insights about social inequality are especially valuable with regard to this research as the particular society Freire discussed, with its specific form of social inequality, was also the Brazilian one11.
Although Sen and Freire might seem miles apart in various ways, Freire’s work associates to Sen’s notion of development as freedom in ways worthy of note. Ultimately the core ideas are related; both hold freedom to be central to true human development – becoming more fully human. Their views on how social and political dynamics pose barriers for the development of some more than others in an unjust way coincide as well. Where Sen mainly offers a way to understand these dynamics, Freire’s focus is on ways to overcome inequalities in freedom. He proposes a form of education as a concrete methodological tool to transform repressive realities. The liberating pedagogy that is designed to create consciousness is related to the ‘problem of adaption’. This ‘adaption’ refers
10 This is how Freire refers to the poor and illiterate. In his early work (for example: Freire, 1994) oppression was mainly associated with social class, later he included aspects like race and gender. The division in either ‘oppressor’ or ‘oppressed’ seems oversimplified.
11 Although in a very different time; Freire describes Brazil during this period of military dictatorship, in the seventies. As he argued himself, Brazil was a country in transition at that time (Freire 1974 3-‐16).
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to the notion that people can feel happy even while experiencing intense deprivation and suffering as a strategy that helps them to adapt to their situation (Sen 1987:45). This is an important issue when thinking in terms of capabilities. The ‘adaption problem’ is often used as one of the main arguments to abandon utilitarian concepts of wellbeing and turn to the capability approach, because ‘satisfying your needs’ cannot be a reliable measure in this view. This notion also poses problems for the approach itself, as it undermines the moral case of listening to the poor, for they would offer a view based on false consciousness (Clark 2009:34, McGregor and Deneulin 2009:7). So we run into the same contradiction referred to earlier through the words of McGregor and Deneulin about the incongruity of advocating in favour of listening to the poor while stating their accounts will be based on false consciousness. Freire provides a way out of this problem and paradox through his conception of conscientização; literally it is the Portuguese verb for raising consciousness, but Freire uses it more specifically for the process of developing critical consciousness. Through this process of conscientização the oppressed can be unaware of the unjust structures and the oppression or poverty they suffer because of it, but this is not a permanent unconsciousness. It is because of the structure that they are not conscious and once these structures and mechanisms are understood, the oppressed will be able to evaluate their situations consciously (Freire 1972:24). Based on this the idea of adaption forms less of a threat to the study of wellbeing and participatory research methods, since participatory methods that raise people’s consciousness would be able to overcome the problem of adaption.
In his reflections about Freire, Blackburn distinguishes the two following aspects about the deep influence of Freires work: “To the poor, he offers philosophical and methodological tools allowing them to perceive afresh, analyse, and transform an oppressive reality into a liberating one. To development workers working in solidarity with poor, his approach is a challenge: not only in its essence revolutionary in calling them to work with the poor to challenge established norms, behaviours, and institutions in society; it is also a call to challenge those ‘ oppressive’ characteristics within themselves (2010:3).“ These changes, for the poor as well as for the development worker or educator, can only be achieved through ‘genuine dialogue’ or ‘creative exchange’. It is within forms of dialogue in which all participants respect the others’ form of knowledge equally valuable as their own that true learning can be achieved.
1.4 Conceptual scheme
The following scheme is an attempt to visualize the most important relations between the main concepts. It represents the reality in question in a quite rough manner to create a clear overview of the relationship between the main concepts. The EFA education is the starting point for the conceptual scheme. It is placed within the whole set of capabilities and the context because of the constant interaction between the EFA and the students reality. It is important to note that all concepts are
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embedded in the context. The different aspects of the contexts produce challenges as well as opportunities for both the wellbeing of people living in the context and for the options they have to improve their wellbeing through the enhancement of capabilities. The arrow that flows out of the EFA education stands for the capabilities that ultimately lead to wellbeing. Those capabilities are rooted in the broader package of capabilities; therefore it cannot be completely separated from each other. The capabilities are then influenced and shaped by both the opportunities and the challenges that arise from the context. At the same time, what people learn can also change the effect the context has on wellbeing, by learning other ways to deal with opportunities and challenges. This way, the influence of the acquired knowledge and skills has impact on the wellbeing. Ultimately this can also lead to changes in the contextual factors.
