It's Lit: A Critical Qualitative Case Study on the Intersections of Hip-Hop Education, Spirituality, and Race

• In Event: Doing Diss. Differently: Black Aesthetics, Hip-Hop Scholarship, and the Dissertation

Abstract

This dissertation is a qualitative case study exploring the understandings, beliefs,
and practices of Youth Spoken Word Poetry (YSW) educators who work within the field
of Hip Hop-Based Education (HHBE) and have grown from youth participants to adult
professionals within an international YSW Network. This study examines how current
YSW practitioners describe and understand their work, along with the multiple literacy
practices they utilize related to spirituality and race. This study is framed by a
sociocultural lens of education, includes a blend of qualitative research methods related
to narrative approaches, and is inspired by literature grounded in Hip Hop-Based
Education; Race and Education; and Spirituality and Education. It is a hope of this study
that the findings lead to a more nuanced understanding of how HHBE functions within
the landscape of education and impact how we approach HHBE moving forward.
Major findings revealed that the participants describe themselves as racialized and
spiritual beings in implicit and explicit ways. YSW participants in this study described
the field of YSW as grounded in African American lineages and acknowledged that the
field currently functions as pluralistic and multicultural. YSW participants describe
spirituality as personal, collective, and transcendent experiences. Though participants
defined spirituality differently, they described it as something that is present, naming it as
an important factor to be considered when examining YSW practice. Core literacy
practices participants engaged with and enacted within the YSW community related to
race and spirituality included acknowledging their voice as something that was expressed

individually, collectively, and universally and across time (past, present, and future).
These findings highlight the value of communities that support: (1) Reflection, or
honoring individual identities; (2) Refraction, or honoring Communities of Practice that
shape our paths; and (3) Dispersion, or the use of stories to support dreaming, sharing,
and revolutionizing the world as we know it.

Author

• Moira E Pirsch