Abstract
Our proposal focuses on a theoretical framework intended to characterise and
understand capacity development processes oriented towards the promotion of a critical development
practice, an approach that faces the tensions between reformist and critical views of development
management. This is what we call capacity development for emancipatory social change. From this
viewpoint, we explore a postgraduate university programme in development management offered by
the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (Spain), with a twofold aim: first, to carry out an inquiry of
the programme as a capacity development process in the training of critical development practitioners
and second, to discuss the suitability of the framework for understanding similar capacity development
processes.