Drawing on the capability approach to human development and Bourdieuan reflexive sociology, this paper explores the interplay of teacher agency and professional practice. The paper names five facets of teacher agency. It shows that teachers with a strong sense of agency actively seek learning opportunities—inquisitive agency; think effortfully about their beliefs and practices—deliberative agency; demand to be valued and respected for their professional work—recognitive agency; are committed to addressing educational disadvantages—responsive agency; and act ethically and make morally justifiable decisions—moral agency. Professional learning experiences that problematise practice and context of practice are proposed as an instrument for building teacher agency.

In Australia, as is the case in other countries around the world, the Early Childhood workforce is in the process of ‘skilling up’ to meet government demands related to quality service provision. This paper sets out to identify what constitutes effective teacher professional learning through mentoring. Guided by critical realism and social practice as theoretical perspectives, the paper uses data drawn from the State-wide Professional Mentoring Program for Early Childhood Teachers (2011–2014), Victoria, Australia. The findings identify four C’s essential to effective professional learning – Context: the association between individual aspirations and systemic requirements; Collegiality: the positioning and importance of collegial relationships; Criticality: critical deliberation in ‘safe’ learning environments; and Change: recognition that teacher learning takes place in the domains of professional dispositions, pedagogical knowledge and social capital. These findings point to the need to consider teachers’ contexts of practice in the design of professional development programs such as mentoring, and to conceptualise learning as a socially situated practice rather than a detached pedagogic event.

Primarily developed as an alternative to narrow measures of well-being such as utility and resources, Amartya Sen’s capability approach places strong emphasis on people’s substantive opportunities. As a broad normative framework, the capability approach has become a valuable tool for understanding and evaluating social arrangements (e.g. education policies and development programmes) in terms of individuals’ effective freedoms to achieve valuable beings and doings. This paper explores the recent emergence of ‘capability’ in Australian education policy, specifically in the Australia in the Asian Century White Paper. We explore capability as a framing device and reveal how its various meanings are at odds with the scholarly literature, specifically Sen’s conception of capability and its implications for social justice in and through education. The analysis shows that the social justice intent of a capability approach appears to be overtaken in the White Paper by an emphasis on outcomes, performance and functionings that seek to serve the nation’s economic interests more than the interests of students, especially the disadvantaged.

This article examines the lived experiences of women in Ethiopian higher education (HE) as a counterpoint to understandings of gender equity informed only by data on admission, progression and completions rates. Drawing on a critical qualitative inquiry approach, we analyse and interpret data drawn from focus group discussions with female students and academic women in two public universities in Ethiopia. Individual accounts and shared experiences of women in HE revealed that despite affirmative action policies that slightly benefit females at entry point, gender inequality persists in qualitative forms. Prejudice against women and sexual violence are highlighted as key expressions of qualitative gender inequalities in the two universities. It is argued that HE institutions in Ethiopia are male-dominated, hierarchical and hostile to women. Furthermore, taken-for-granted gender assumptions and beliefs at institutional, social relational and individual levels operate to make women conform to structures of disadvantage and in effect sustain the repressive gender relations.