Reconceptualizing Quality Assessment through a Culturally Relevant Lens

• In Event: Reconceptualizing a More Culturally and Contextually Responsive QRIS for Family Childcare Professionals

Abstract

INTRODUCTION
In the field of early childhood education, the silencing of Black women’s voices and the disregarding of their intellectual thought is evident in the managerial professionalism enforced by representatives of state agencies and QRIS’ and an over-emphasis on institutional knowledge. These practices champion Western, white middle-class values and norms while encumbering Black women family childcare professionals’ agency in developing meaningful pedagogical practices that meet the individual child’s personal, sociocultural, linguistic, and developmental capabilities as well as the families’ cultural values (Brown, 2009; Brown & Barry, 2019; Author, in press).

METHODS
This narrative case study explored the experiences of six state-licensed Black women family childcare providers, who primarily served Black children between the ages of birth and four years of age within a mid-sized, midwestern urban metropolis from four zip codes most heavily populated by the Black community (over 70%). Their narratives were collected virtually or by phone through a series of IRB-approved, semi-structured interviews and a focus group. The transcripts underwent a two-phase deductive to inductive analysis. During the first phase, I conducted a line-by-line reading of the transcripts to identify and categorize significant ideas based on similarities and patterns found in the narratives (Maxwell & Miller, 2008). The themes that emerged described the women’s understanding of themselves, their work, their communities, and the world. The codes generated from the first interviews helped me formulate the questions to guide the focus group and subsequent interviews. During the second phase, the transcripts were analyzed deductively using these identified codes.

RESULTS
The narratives gathered in this work illustrate how Black women family childcare professionals opposed the taken-for-granted assumptions that white middle-class ECE holds about teaching, learning, childhood, and curriculum. Instead, they cared for children according to the values of the parents of their programs and their own program policies. In addition to the children’s cognitive development, the women’s pedagogies were rooted in community-based practices that highlighted (1) the providers’ lingo-cultural philosophies, (2) the children’s spiritual growth and development, and (3) a sense of collectivism and community advancement.

IMPLICATIONS
My work challenges the way wealth, privilege, and power in education have valorized the rationalistic Western lens and disregarded other perspectives. The data demonstrates the need for QRIS’ to re-assess what constitutes meaningful knowledge and essential education by centralizing educators’ backgrounds and their cultural congruence with children, families, and their communities. In centralizing the community and families’ voices QRIS’ would (1) utilize a family- and community-based evaluation process that preferences the cultural wealth (Yosso, 2005) of providers, children, and their families rather than the standardized measurements set by legislators and policymakers. (2) QRIS’ should account for the experiential knowledge and cultural wisdom valued by the families and communities served, rather than placing heavy emphasis on formal education.

Author

• Crystasany Turner, Erikson Institute
  Presenting Author