Improving Female Teacher Deployment to Rural Schools

Abstract

In this chapter, I discuss research that aimed to investigate female teachers’ valued functionings in Kwara State, Nigeria, particularly with a view to understanding how and to what extent rural environments posed constraint on these. Given the severe dearth of female teachers in rural schools, it was hypothesised that female teachers’ avoidance of rural posts was often a product of contending with capability constraint. Thus, data were collected and analysed through a Capability Approach/Critical Realist (CA/CR) lens (see Chapter 2 for further elaboration on the terminology and rationale for this), which provided causal links between female teachers’ valued beings and doings, the constraints that rural posts posed on these (both actual and perceived), and their subsequent subversion of the deployment system. This research not only had the positive analytical and political effects of prioritising the knowledge, participation, and empowerment of female teachers, but it also informed the development of an innovative Rural Teacher Incentive Scheme to improve the deployment and retention of teachers.