‘Trending towards capabilities approach’

Date: Wednesday, 11 November 2015
Location: Breakwater Lodge, Waterfront, Cape Town (09:00 – 13:00)

Our approach to curriculum development is driven by quest towards social justice. We therefore view capabilities approach as enabling vehicle towards achievement of this goal. We intend to use capabilities approach to challenge dominant vocational skills based education. We support the view that higher education has a moral responsibility to educate multi-dimensional human beings not merely to train students as workers (Deprez and Wood, 2013). The development of a civic-minded university graduate will require exposure to a wider knowledge base in order to develop agentive professionals who would be able to extend human capabilities and freedom to improve the lives of others (Deprez and Wood, 2013).

In this theme we consider possibilities and value of this approach in framing curriculum development at CPUT. It will compare and contrast the capabilities approach to discourses of ‘generic skills’, human capital, globalisation and the knowledge economy.