Culturally Relevant Science Teaching Using a Hip-Hop-Based Epistemological Model

• In Event: Roundtable Session 25
  In Roundtable Session: Multicultural/Multiethnic Education: New Insights for Schooling

Abstract

At the intersection of culturally responsive pedagogy and hip-hop lies an important space for informing and even reforming how science is taught. By defining this space and incorporating an epistemological model that is based upon cultural aspects of hip-hop, this paper makes the case that knowledge construction in science can be effectively analogized to how knowledge is constructed in hip-hop culture. Incorporating this conception in an urban science classroom would properly acknowledge and honor students’ cultural capital, make the study of science more engaging for them, and refute hegemonic conceptions of science as a mysterious and impossibly challenging field, best suited for elderly White men in lab coats.

Author

• Maurice Dolberry, University of Washington - Seattle