Capability Approach to Valued Pedagogical Practices in Tanzania: An Alternative to Learner-Centred Pedagogy?

Pedagogy significantly affects children’s learning and growth, but appropriate pedagogy in the Global South is still under-theorised and lacks empirical evidence. With the aim of proposing pedagogical approaches alternative to the dominant framework – the ‘learner-centred pedagogy’ currently implemented by international donors in a top-down manner – this research has explored locally-relevant pedagogy through a bottom-up process. By applying the capability approach, it has examined achievements and pedagogy valued by primary teachers in Tanzania. The analysis of 30 semi-structured interviews applied the critical realist concept of the ‘four-planar social being’. This revealed the hegemonic power dynamics between the international, national and local players as well as those between the researcher and researched, plausibly shaping the teachers’ valued pedagogies. The effort undertaken to appreciate people’s values could intensify the ideological colonisation through pedagogy that learner-centred pedagogy has inherently imposed on the Global South.