Educational Agency for the new learnfare

Abstract

Welfare is a strategic framework to think about the concept of development within which both freedom and human responsibility might be conjugated through the primacy of the subjects and their project of self-fulfillment. By drawing on the theory of the capabilities developed by Amartya Sen, this article highlights how educational agency acts in an expansive, powerful and recursive way on the individual and social functioning. Such agency thus promotes a new model of educational and training policies focussed on the concept of capability. As a matter of fact, current pedagogical sciences are fully committed to contribute to a new paradigm of “learnfare of capabilities,” which aims at promoting the empowerment and development of citizens’ capacities, with a special focus on inclusion and active participation, both in society and in the working environment.