Teaching in Context

Esther Quintero is a senior fellow at the Albert Shanker Institute, where she conducts and synthesizes research that can inform education issues such as equity, systemwide reform, and improving the teaching profession. Specifically, she focuses on understanding schools as organizations, social capital as a lever for educational improvement, and the sociology of the classroom. In July 2014 Quintero launched the Social Side of Education, a research campaign and blog series focusing on the social and relational aspects of improving teaching where established and emerging scholars (and, increasingly, practitioners) share their research and expertise in accessible ways. She is also coinvestigator in an Institute of Education Sciences–funded project that will develop an instrument to capture rich evidence of teachers’ professional activity and the contexts in which it occurs. Other areas of interest to Quintero include social inequality, the sociology of gender and race, and group processes. She holds a BA from the University of Seville (Spain) and a PhD in sociology from Cornell University.