**4. Building Human Capabilities**

Research on capabilities can inform public policy. This special issue of *Education Science* focuses on research that informs social action to build human capabilities for people left behind in their local context and promotes learning across contexts.

Human capabilities emerged from comparisons of states in India and women's opportunities in Islamic countries [112–114]. Nussbaum argued that women had a right to education to a level needed to support a family, a threshold of wellbeing not met in countries that denied education to women. Nussbaum [112,113] focuses on health, education, faith, and other freedoms and responsibilities. Building on her ideas, the capabilities noted in Table 3 relate to education and career pathways, along with localized social support for actualizing them. Local schools and community organizations are at the center of this approach. Their capacity to organize interventions is enhanced by investment from the government, businesses, and foundations, including university–school partnerships that provide information and local groups providing mentoring and social support (Table 3).

**Table 3.** Human-capabilities framework for addressing educational inequalities: assessing gaps and opportunities for social support and networking.


Comparing strategies used to support marginalized students and communities in Ireland and the US [61] reveals no simple solutions to K-12 preparation and access inequality. Of course, the US is much larger but about half of the states have more population than Ireland. A comparison of US states also shows that states that coordinated student aid funding with rising costs and provided social support saw more substantial gains in college enrollment rates than comparable states [43,114].

The human-capabilities approach provides workable means for research informing policy and practice. Studies informing policymakers in Ireland, England, and the US confirm the workability of this approach in raising capabilities (preparation, access, and college success) for groups that would likely otherwise be left behind [9,69,115]. Students' engagement in encouragement and support services improves the odds of college enrollment [47]. Research informs practitioners about what does not work as intended, why this is the case, and alternative policies and practices. However, substantial changes will likely be needed to transport innovations across contexts, even when successful interventions occur.

In addition, and perhaps more importantly, action studies informing social support projects help expand and refine services and the quality of information and mentoring they provide. The global experience of the move to marketization through student loans in higher education raises differing social issues across nations. Consider the example of possible social interventions that would minimize the negative consequences of growing student debt, a problem of emerging importance across countries in the Pacific region. The economic wellbeing of students who graduate with debt, as measured by their ability to support their families, is a primary indicator in the human-capabilities framework (Table 3). Since local and national economies vary substantially, the local remedies to this challenge must differ to fit policy circumstances and cultures.
