Lukas Bäuerle

Socioeconomist

Additional subsection for the Chapter by Lukas Bäuerle and Michelle Meixieira Groenewald

Capabilities: From Reproduction to Reflection and Action

When observed from a science studies perspective, educational programs do play a (maybe the) crucial role in perpetuating pre-established paradigms. Prominently, this is expressed in the synonymic use of the concepts ‘normal science’ and ‘textbook science’ by Kuhn. The central competency fostered by the educational programs of disciplined sciences appears to be the reproduction of theories and procedures. As already Kuhn himself underlined, these reproductive competencies are not just intellectual in nature, but bear a strong performative aspect: “the process of learning a theory depends upon the study of applications, including practice problem-solving both with a pencil and paper and with instruments in the laboratory” (Kuhn 1996: 47) [1]. The defining feature of a normal-scientific education in the Kuhnian sense is its overall calibration towards a predefined set of knowledge and related procedures to be achieved by deficitary newcomers to a discipline. Benchmarked knowledge allows for standardized assessment procedures; didactical considerations are limited to the technical quest of maximum efficiency in transferring this knowledge (see, for instance, the scope of mainstream EE considerations in Allgood et. al. 2015). This kind of standardized education, an „epistemological steeplechase, toward a preordained end“ (Meyer and Land 2005:379), is deeply embedded in the etymological roots of central pedagogical terms such as competencies (from lat.: competere) or curriculum [2]. Among the social sciences, economics ranks amongst the most standardized disciplines when it comes to content, didactics and assessment procedures (Graupe 2019).

As laid out before, such an understanding of education does not necessarily conflict with notions of heterodoxy. One standardized monoculture, for instance, might be replaced by another one, inspired by one heterodox tradition. However, bearing in mind the ascendency of interested and transformative pluralisms over the past 15 years, we would like to propose a different vocabulary for capabilities reflecting a pluralist EE. Irrespective of the question whether the concept is well suited to rethink well-being and development (for a critical perspective see Shilliam 2012), we think that Sen’s notion of capabilities can be instructive for pedagogical ends as pursued by the heterodox community. Sen put people’s agency—their being and doing in light of a functioning, aiming at a freely chosen achievement—at the heart of processes of value creation (Sen 1985). Well-being is then seen “in terms of functioning vectors and the capability to achieve them” (Sen 1985:203). When transferring such an understanding to the educational realm, the motivations, questions and goals of students (their functioning vectors and envisioned achievements) are to be seen as crucial cornerstones of their educational processes. Taking seriously such an approach hardly contrasts with an educational approach prevailing in ‘normal-science’ EE, where beings, doings and functionings are all aligned at achievements chosen by third parties (especially disciplinary traditions and program heads). When taking a Senian approach, achievements as envisioned by students take a decisive role. The notion of capability, thus, goes beyond the transferal of predetermined skill stets but invites students to take a proactive role in their educational journey. Empirical studies show a threefold motivational background in the undergraduate economics student body: (1) understanding economic matters, (2) practically engaging in economic matters and (3) politically transforming economic matters (Pühringer and Bäuerle 2019):

1. The desire to understand economic matters is mostly rooted in students’ real-world experiences before they enroll for the curriculum (Mearman et al. 2014) [3]. ‘Why is there such a thing as poverty?’, ‘How can we explain the recent Argentinian economic crisis?’, ‘How does (neo-)colonialism continue to shape economic interactions today?’, ‘How can economies be designed in a sustainable manner?’ are typical expressions of this decidedly epistemic motivation. Being capable to answer these questions demands the ability to find, understand, compare and eventually integrate epistemic possibilities as provided by social scientists working on these questions and thoroughly relate them to the specific case in question. Note that learning epistemic possibilities, as envisioned by interested pluralism, alone does not suffice to accomplish this goal. The understanding of theories and methods is a means to the end of understanding a specific aspect of economic reality. Enabling and assessing educational progress entails, in such a panorama, both the epistemically sound reproduction of a specific interpretative possibility, as well as the concise ‘transferal’ of such theories and methods to the issue at question.
2. A second motivation virulent in the economics student body entails the practical engagement in economic matters. One could argue that this is a ‘false’ motivation, to be delegated to fields such as business administration or entrepreneurship. In fact, in many national educational traditions, business administration and economics students do share a lot of courses, especially at the beginning of undergraduate programs. What is more, economics introductory courses have an enormous outreach far beyond its own narrow disciplinary borders [4]. That is to say that economics instructors notoriously face motivational structures in their student body that do not match their own disciplinary (or sub-disciplinary) fashions. Amongst them ranks students’ motivation to learn useful and applicable knowledge. On the other hand, to actually address these motivations reveals, a possibility to further promote pluralist EE against the backdrop of typically highly abstract mainstream study content unfit for real-world application, let alone instructive potential for practice. Successful examples of a practice-oriented pluralist education include the usage of transdisciplinary methods such as action labs, where students are invited to experiment with social or technological innovations in a given setting [5]. Another example would be courses or curricula designated to entrepreneurial activities. Here, a pluralist edge in the spirit of both interested and transformative pluralisms can be seen in the contextualization of entrepreneurial activities, materializing in the form of social and/or ecological start-ups, initiatives or organizations [6]. The decisive capability fostered here is the ability to use and apply knowledge learned or generated in the economics curriculum not just to understand, but to shape economic matters, thereby becoming an active part of economic reality itself.
3. Finally, the aspiration to politically transform economic matters is to be discussed. ‘The Economy’, in this instance, is seen as something problematic, that is in the sense of unjust, ecologically detrimental or, generally speaking, counterdirectional to normative considerations upheld by students. This clearly goes beyond the textbook dichotomy of (normative) policy-advice based on (positive) knowledge. Enrolling in an economics program is connected to the desire to challenge this version of a capitalist/neoliberal/neocolonial/unjust etc. economy and to develop it into something more aligned to different normative standards. Typically, this motivation is closely linked to understanding economic matters, although with a decisive critical edge. Understanding, here, entails the critical penetration of fixed answers which are themselves seen as a means of control (c.f. the tradition of critical pedagogy as developed by Giroux 1983). However, it embraces two more capabilities, both of which are marked by a generative/creative component: one addresses the ability to reflect on different ethical standpoints and envision desirable vectors for social alteration on the basis of explicit normative considerations and imaginations. A second one goes beyond a mere epistemic challenge onto the performative experimentation with social relationships beyond those envisioned by orthodox theory and practice. Since a lot of (even heterodox) curricula tend to uphold a classical stance of education as a purely epistemic endeavor, these performative capabilities are rarely met by the formalized parts of an economics curriculum. However, students with that emphasis typically (co-)create opportunities for politico-economic transformation on their own account: be it via the engagement in student initiatives, activism outside academia and/or entrepreneurial activities (see above), based on strong considerations of purpose and ethics. In a sense, engaging in a pluralist student group on campus precisely reflects the “agency freedom” Sen (1985:203–4) had in mind: against the backdrop of institutional obstacles, students proactively address their own motivational disposition, thereby developing themselves, in some cases even the institutional setting itself.

Note, that none of these motivations aims at ‘Learning to think like an (heterodox) economist’. When taking a student-centered (rather than a dogma-centered approach) against the backdrop of Sen’s theory, capabilities might enter the discussion that are typically not accounted for by considerations rooted in long-held traditions of a given scientific community [7]. Besides providing orientation and guidance by means of their respective capabilities, instructors and faculty officials need to center the expectations and lived-experiences of students, so that pluralist economics curricula can thrive.

Endnotes

1. Note, that what is someone able to do when educated economically is, hence, not only a question of mental, but also of embodied dispositions.
2. “The term curriculum captures this perfectly, originally denoting a circular racecourse of standard length used to order the competitive movement of charioteers” (Hershock 2008, 26).
3. See, for illustrative reasons, the impressive list of well-known economists’ own motivations in (Mearman, Berger, and Guizzo 2021:7).
4. In the German case, in the summer term 2019 approximately 22,4% of the entire 2.7 mio. strong student body (any subject) had to take a mandatory economics introductory course; while only 21.581 students (= 0,008%) were enrolled the same semester in an economics curriculum (Bäuerle, Pühringer, and Ötsch 2020:7).
5. See, for instance, the Doughnut Economics Action Labs (DEAL 2024) as inspired by Kate Raworth (2017).
6. See , for instance, the “Social Entrepreneurship and Impact” course offered by India based Ashoka University (2024).
7. As explorative elicitations by Rethinking Economics indicate, a good share of the now discussed capabilities are actually demanded by employers as well (Yurko 2018).

References

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