The Impact of Hip-Hop Instruction on Students in Urban Settings

• In Event: Hip-Hop-Based Pedagogy as Culturally Responsive Curriculum: Whose Culture Is It Really?

Abstract

Recent years have seen an increased focus on urban education. With this increased interest there has been a movement towards identifying classroom instructional practices that are aimed at appealing to more diverse student populations. Hip-hop pedagogy is offered as an instructional approach that has the potential to reach diverse populations of students in urban settings. In some instances hip-hop pedagogy is being presented as a culturally responsive or multicultural curricular approach. Given the proliferation of negative images portrayed of African Americans and negative messages advocated in this genre, we sought to explore the impact of hip-hop pedagogy on students learning. Specifically, we explored the impact of hip-hop instruction on three aspects of student learning: engagement, concept mastery and identity formation. The study followed an experimental design. Two groups of elementary-aged students received two, 45-minute lessons on statistics. For the first lesson, Group A served as the control group and received a lesson designed by the National Association for Teachers of Mathematics. Group B served as the experimental group and received a similar lesson that was modified by the lead author to reflect the tenets of hip-hop pedagogy. Throughout instruction students were assessed on their level of engagement by the second author who used an observational scale for measuring engagement. Concept mastery and identity formation were assessed post instruction. For the second lesson, Group B served as the control group and received the NCTM-designed lesson and Group A served as the experimental group and received the researcher-modified lesson. While we are still in the process of analyzing data, preliminary results point to significant differences in students’ level of engagement. Although we expected engagement to increase with the hip-hop instruction it actually decreased. We are currently in the process of analyzing data on content mastery and identity formation.

Author

• Tayana S. Dowdell, Metropolitan School District of Lawrence Township