Inside and Outside: Subaltern Hip-Hop Identity Formation and Authentic Experience

• In Event: "You Ain't Gotta Lie to Kick It": Exploring Teacher Identity in Hip-Hop Education

Abstract

Objective
Hip-hop based pedagogy engages in teacher-student dynamics beyond the process of schooling as enculturation. This approach involves a dynamic shift in the identities that teachers should foster in themselves, as well as their students. To ground this in classroom practice, this presentation crystallizes the professional experiences of a mixed race, gay urban science teacher to showcase how the line between appreciation and appropriation needs further research. This presentation provides a view of hip-hop based pedagogy involving teacher identity in classrooms to embrace authenticity over appropriation.

Conceptual Framework
Hip-hop education shows promise in urban contexts but requires a shift in teacher identity and performance in the classroom (Kim & Pulido, 2015). The move beyond hip-hop cultural insiders to hip-hop cultural outsiders remains a subaltern view of researching hip-hop based pedagogy, identity formation, and implications for teacher education (Irby, Hall, & Hill, 2013; Love, 2015). This author is one of these subaltern voices, a hip-hop cultural outsider who makes authentic use of this pedagogy to ensure to not appropriate this approach as a form of surveillance (i.e., Oppenheim, 2012).

Modes of Inquiry and Data
As a teacher-researcher, this author embraces the methodology of testimonio to enact a “fundamentally democratic and egalitarian narrative form” to move beyond empirical objectivism as par excellence for teacher research (Beverley, 2008, p.259). Accordingly, the data source for this presentation is a self-reflective, interpretative, and critical narrative.

Conclusions and Significance
This author presents an argument for more research on how teacher outsiders – those that are not directly experienced or fluent in hip-hop culture – can be professional workers of hip-hop culture. Research on how teachers experience hip-hop culture as a popular phenomenon and what influence the public imaginary plays on teachers’ identity formation necessitates more inquiry. The implications for this type of research is far-reaching in that it examines hip-hip based pedagogy beyond the myopic experience of those who are seeped inside the culture to those that would most benefit from being able to adopt and engage with this type of pedagogy in an authentic way in their classrooms from outside, the subaltern view.

References
Beverley, J. (2008). Testimonio, Subalternity, and Narrative Authority. In N. K. Denzin, & Y. S.
Lincoln, Strategies of qualitative inquiry (Vol. 2, pp. 257-270). Thousand Oaks: Sage.
Irby, D. J., Hall, H. B., & Hill, M. L. (2013). Schooling teachers, schooling ourselves: Insights
and reflections from teaching K-12 teachers how to use hip-hop to educate
students. International Journal of Multicultural Education, 15(1), 1-18.
Kim, J., & Pulido, I. (2015). Examining Hip-Hop as Culturally Relevant Pedagogy. Journal of
Curriculum and Pedagogy, 12(1), 17-35.
Love, B. L. (2015). What Is Hip-Hop-Based Education Doing in Nice Fields Such as Early
Childhood and Elementary Education?. Urban Education, 50(1), 106-131.
Oppenheim, R. (2012). Surveillance. In N. Lesko, & S. Talburt (Eds.), Keywords in youth
studies: Tracing affects, movements, knowledges (pp.54-58). New York: Routledge.

Author

• Phillip Andrew Boda, Teachers College, Columbia University