Mecanismos cronobiológicos subyacentes al aumento de riesgo

This section highlights the value-added of the CA in conceptualizing education compared to other theoretical approaches. Firstly, a capabilities perspective fully appreciates the intrinsic and instrumental roles of education and guides education policy towards the expansion of people’s capabilities. Sen (1999a) describes how a human-capabilities perspective notes and values additional roles of education – reading, communicating, arguing, being able to choose in a more informed way, being taken seriously by others and so on – beyond mere

enhancement of human capital. In Sen’s words (1999a, p.293), “the yardstick of assessment concentrates on different achievements”, between the human-capital and human-capabilities focus. In her account of the three models of education, Robeyns (2006, p.79) also explains how capabilities provide a scope as wide as “human life and societal arrangements stretch in reality’” unlike other restricted normative approaches. She argues that the human-capital approach is economistic and instrumentalistic in focusing on productivity benefits and

blocking the non-material dimension of life, whereas the human-rights approach runs the risk of being rhetorical and focusing solely on the provision of education but not beyond (e.g. the capability to participate in education etc.). Trani et al. (2012) also reaffirm that capabilities

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extend beyond the human-rights framework which entitles all children to education but fails to make that right operational.It is important to note, however, that these critiques are based on the ineffective actualization of rights in practice, and not faults inherent in the concept of ‘human right’ – the fact that rights indicate the status and urgency of a moral claim make them important in their own right (McCowan, 2011). Where capabilities add value is enrichment of the rights-based framework in providing a more comprehensive view of the content of rights and the conditions necessary for people to exercise their rights (McCowan, 2011). Like other aspects of development, then, the advantage of applying Sen’s Capability Approach to education and education inequality lies in a broadened informational space for evaluating individuals’ well-being.

Secondly, the CA offers a useful alternative to standard economic frameworks for thinking about issues like disadvantage, inequality and social justice. To begin with, it may be argued that many approaches or frameworks, such as school effectiveness or Education for All, only include narrowly defined aspects of education, for example, enrolment, completed years of schooling etc. without addressing real-life complexities of students’ schooling experiences. While some of these may correspond to functionings or well-being achievements in the capability framework, the latter delves deeper into the range and quality of alternatives individuals have in their capability sets to achieve valued functionings. It reveals information about people’s choices and motivations behind their choices. Thus, while an effectiveness approach does not differentiate between two students at school A with identical academic achievements, for example, four years of formal schooling, a capability perspective argues the two may have had very different capability sets to choose from in the first place and may differ substantially in their ability to convert their achievements into other opportunities in future. For instance, it may be that in choosing to attend school A, one student had fewer or no options to study elsewhere or that all other options in his or her capability set were inferior to the preferred option, for example, all other schools fared worse in terms of quality than school A. Moreover, capabilities also differentiate between opportunity and choice – being able to choose to attend school does not automatically imply the opportunity to acquire some or all of the desired properties of education nor does it reveal what students are able to achieve with it (Kelly, 2012). Similarly, it is possible to have opportunity but not achieve, for example, a student may not choose the best school in town due for social or personal reasons, despite having the opportunity to do so. Additionally, the CA also considers the choices and

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opportunities individuals actively create for themselves in the process of obtaining education, emphasizing individuals’ agency in achievement.

A related point concerns the consequent inadequacy or inappropriateness of indicators in existing approaches to measure education effectiveness. The Capability Approach is set apart from such approaches or frameworks in addressing human well-being as a multi-dimensional concept, encouraging researchers to step out from a neat and linear view of development and break free from narrowly defined views of inequality. In arguing that the CA i s at least as good as the rival ‘education for all’ approach, for instance, Unterhalter and Brighouse (2007, p.68) describe how enrolment ratios or gender gaps expressed in terms of completion often provide a limited view of prevalent gender inequality, whereas a capability perspective appropriately addresses wider meanings of gender inequality by giving weight to processes within schools or resulting from schooling that cause it. In short, the CA highlights the importance of processes as well as contexts in obtaining and interpreting data, and

encourages multidimensionality in the conceptualization and measurement of complex issues like poverty, inequality and social injustice.

Finally, the advantage of adopting a capabilities perspective is not only limited to viewing education and education inequality in a different light but also in considering what lies beyond. From a capabilities perspective, it has already been argued that the mere provision or expansion of educational opportunities is not enough as it may not always automatically translate into expansion of capabilities27_{. Not all children participate or benefit from}

education in the same way, nor are they able to convert the resources afforded by education to generate similar advantages in life (Hart, 2012, p.276). On one hand, such an argument forces us to identify a range of choice and non-choice factors that disadvantage certain individuals or groups and to acknowledge that education contributes to capabilities but only under certain conditions. A child branded stupid by teachers or peers can achieve little at school if his or her hopes and aspirations are blighted by what others think of him. A girl brought up in a discriminatory environment which restricts the privilege of education to males only can attach little or no value to education, having adapted to the realities around her. On the other hand, a capabilities perspective simultaneously triggers thought along a range of institutional and pedagogical tangents that can discriminate positively in favour of

27 _{This is why it is easy to see how a capabilities perspective surpasses rival human-capital and human-rights approaches}

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disadvantaged groups or individuals. It acknowledges that the factors that condition the acquisition and use of knowledge are, in fact, multi-rooted and diverse, and offers a set of conceptual tools for reflecting on ways of reducing the present injustices in our education system and better guiding the just delivery of public services (Hart, 2012, p.278). But the real beauty of a capabilities perspective unfolds in additionally arguing for a commensurate

enhancement of other instrumental freedoms and functionings that can enable people to achieve (Kelly, 2012). Its multidimensional nature makes such other opportunities and achievements hard to ignore. Capabilities ask, ‘What use is choice if people aren’t able to benefit from choices?’, thus arguing for social, political and economic redress and

distribution. The broader agenda of expansion of people’s capabilities forces us to look beyond issues like academic instruction: at contexts, at social, economic and cultural circumstances that condition educational endeavours (Flores-Crespo, 2007).

If capabilities provide the appropriate lens to view educational issues, what does the image of education equality look like within the approach? In other words, if the capability to be educated matters for social justice and is a basic or fundamental one, how do nations ensure equality of this very basic capability? Firstly, it is clear from the arguments above that social justice may often require more than mere equality of capabilities – and just educational capabilities – for disadvantaged groups. Secondly, even when considering equality alone, there is absence of a single consensual theoretical framework for conceptualizing equality in education. On issues of gender and education equality, for instance, Vaughan (2007)

demonstrates how feminist campaigns remain divided as to whether education equality entails equality of access, equality of achievement and opportunity, equality of treatment, or equality of outcomes and gender equity in society. Similarly, Hedge and MacKenzie (2012, p.336) discuss how equality of education is not so much about educational outcomes as it is about ensuring that “all are equally placed in the education process, and equally supported”. In part, the fuzzy picture of education equality painted by the Approach remains consistent with its original position on broader evaluative spaces for well-being28_{. Thus, while there is} no magic solution or definitive checklist of educational capabilities to ensure equality, there are definitely broader informational spaces to conceptualize dimensions in which less injustice or less inequality is deemed necessary to serve the requirements of social justice.

28 _{Nussbaum’s (2011, p.40-41) Capabilities Approach also does not answer distributional questions beyond a minimum}

acceptable threshold. For her, the extent to which adequacy of capability also requires equality of capability calls for detailed thought about each capability, asking what respect for human dignity requires.

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Moreover, contextual relevance – a celebrated feature of the Approach – underscores the idea that the way participants talk about capabilities across different contexts can reveal crucial information about their capacity to articulate capabilities, issues of adaptive preference and endogenous sources of deprivation (Unterhalter, 2012). It ensures that plurality is

characterized in applications of the approach by the extent to which human diversity influences or guides it.

The above argument, however, begs the question: What is the conceptualization of education inequality in the context of this research? Or, in other words, what is the informational space and the metric adopted to measure and compare education inequality in Pakistan’s given educational landscape? As argued above, the relevant informational space for the current research is provided by educational capabilities and the metric adopted for their comparison is the notion of pure equality as reflected in the broader UN agenda29_{. Thus, strictly speaking,} education inequality in the given context equals inequality of educational capabilities for school-going children under different schooling types. This is reflected in the primary

research question addressed by this thesis, namely, how do children’s educational capabilities differ across different types of schooling in Pakistan? The categories of educational

capabilities (and capability dimensions) in which such education inequality manifests itself are found after combining theoretical insights with contextual specification provided by children and parent participants (see Table 3.2). It is also useful to recall here that, at a broader level, this thesis investigates the relationship between historically institutionalized school diversity and education inequality, that is, how participation in a particular form of education or schooling correlates with the capabilities gained through education. Broadly speaking, therefore, education inequality in the context of this research also concerns other inequalities to the extent that they mediate potential differences in children’s educational capabilities across schooling types. This is appropriately reflected in the study’s second research question, namely, how are potential differences in children’s educational capabilities across different types of schooling mediated by certain individual, family and household characteristics? As described above, such a broad conception of education inequality is also consistent with the theoretical position within the CA that argues for a commensurate enhancement of other instrumental freedoms and functionings that can enable people to

29 _{For instance, gender equality is defined by the UN as equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities for men and women}

(UNWomen, 2018). This does not mean that men and women will become the same, rather, equality in this sense implies equality of rights, responsibilities and opportunities between individuals and considering the needs, interests and prioritie s of all, irrespective of accidents of birth such as gender, ethnicity, religion, socio-economic status etc.

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achieve when considering educational disadvantage and injustices.

The CA literature reviewed thus far aids the conceptualization of an evaluative exercise in education by establishing the relevance of a capabilities perspective to educational issues, defining some educational capabilities and encouraging further specification through the notion of multiple realizability. Additionally, in discussing various manifestations, it commonly identifies education equality as lesser inequality or injustice in broader educational informational spaces. But how can such an exercise be conceptualized in the educational context of Pakistan and how may further specification of educational capabilities in such a context be achieved? The final section explores these questions by combining existing features of the approach as well as building on prior work on educational capabilities.