The Radical Refuge: Reconceptualizing Teacher Quality Liberated From the Historical Commodification of Latina and Black Women in Early Childhood Education

by Vanessa Rodriguez

Current models for defining teacher quality derive their meaning from attributes measured from observable behaviors, without regard for teachers’ internal experiences, and are externally constructed and applied. Teachers are judged according to these models, which do not value what the teacher intrinsically feels, thinks, or processes to achieve the observable teaching behaviors; these domains are deemed irrelevant to the evaluation of teacher quality. This phenomenon reflects broader societal values whereby White men have set the terms for what constitutes a “quality” woman in current settings and historically. In education, this means that a teacher’s quality is constructed according to and in support of White, male, Eurocentric values, based on characteristics that are consistent with the perspective on women those values reflect.

This endogeneity systematically shifts constructs of teacher quality to reflect what White males expect a female teacher to visibly exhibit. Over time, this bias has led to a reality where educational leaders (including female leaders) have used historical expectations for women to enshrine familiar observable behaviors to define teacher quality in our almost exclusively female teaching workforce. These expectations manifest in quality metrics based on how the teacher looks, presents themself, and maintains their classroom: on simple, reproducible, observable behaviors rather than on more complex evaluations of the teacher’s internal cognitions, inherent intelligence, or complexity of thought (Rodriguez & Mascio, 2018)—characteristics traditionally reserved for more prestigious male-dominated spheres of society. The evaluations of quality center on teaching, not on the teacher. Teaching and teachers are often conflated. Anchoring definitions of teacher quality on White male expectations reinforces a teacher’s lack of trust in their own inherent “value” and encourages teachers to rely on these White male externally derived definitions of quality to prove even to themselves that they have value as educators.

This dynamic is most harmful among women teachers of color, who have to work harder to conform to these externally observable behaviors and who become even more reliant on them to continuously establish their self-worth, value, and quality as educators. My personal educational journey has made me acutely aware of this insidious dependency on the White male definition of quality and its dominance over my internal indicators of being a quality educator.