ABSTRACT
This chapter sets out some considerations necessary when determining and evaluating the professional capabilities of women teachers working in Sub-Saharan Africa before outlining the specific approach used here. Drawing on Sen's definition of an agent as one who is able to act in order to bring about change, the approach to understanding and evaluating teacher's professional capabilities outlined in the chapter explores how teachers negotiate these challenging conditions in order to conceptualize, pursue and achieve valued goals. Two sets of questions, extrapolated from the official and teacher-generated lists of capabilities, are then 'asked of' the qualitative data. The first set determined agency freedom and the second set determined the achievement of these functionings. The chapter represents the empirical and analytical approach used to determine and evaluate teacher's professional capabilities. It developes the exploratory definition of quality teaching and outlined an approach to understanding what these capabilities are in a specific place and at an analytically frozen moment in time.
