Designing Culturally Relevant Hip-Hop Curriculum to Support the STEM Identity Development of Underrepresented Students

• In Event: Searching for Identity: (Re)Imagining Culturally Relevant and Equitable STEM Practices and Counter-Spaces

Abstract

Broadly defined the construction of a STEM identity involves recognizing one’s self within the field, having content and having the ability to use proper tools relevant to the STEM field(Carlone & Johnson, 2007). Too often identity development research on marginalized groups in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fails to account for their lived experiences as within the STEM curriculum. Specifically, marginalized students experience difficulty in trying to leverage their positionality amongst their peers in STEM classroom environments. The construction of identities in STEM classrooms is also subjected to non-negotiable, fixed narratives of how underrepresented students' lived experiences should be expressed compared to their peers' dominant views that have always been perpetuated in those spaces (Baszile, 2009). The restriction or hindrance of healthy identity development in stem courses has damaging effects on students. Research has found that race, class, language, and other intersectionality identities are often hidden or invisible in STEM identity development research. When faculty do not understand the diverse STEM identities and forms of participation of minoritized students can fail to recognize student’s development of curricular knowledge.This ideology is harmful in STEM classrooms as it does not account for the acquisition of knowledge for students of color towards their STEM identity development As a result, continuation of misunderstandings and deficit views occurs among student’s participations and perceptions of persistence in STEM fields (Malcolm & Feder, 2016).

Educators must be willing to use a variety of critical pedagogies and asset frameworks that center the voices of students in STEM classrooms. In particular, Funds of identity is defined as the accumulation of historical, cultural, and socially created resources that assist with the recognition of one's identity-development through self-expression and understanding. In the recognizing funds of identity, an individual's lived experience can be dynamic and complex in a variety of settings (e.g., environmental, social, and geographical). A shift can occur in STEM education posits hip-hop pedagogies along with critical theories, can capture how oppression and power are understood in underrepresented communities and translated into STEM classroom practices.Critical hip-hop pedagogies incorporate the use of rapping, cipher battles, dance, graffiti, and DJ-ing to describe stories of struggle to triumph authentically. Critical hip-hop pedagogy acknowledges through diverse epistemological awareness of how people's cultural and linguistic realization can assist students grasping scientific knowledge. In using these frameworks educators can bridge to connect curriculum with marginalized students' lived experiences.
Students need opportunities to understand and learn STEM-related content in ways that are relevant to their lived experiences and academic needs.Therefore, there is a need for curricular tools that centers and empowers underrepresented groups' lived experiences towards STEM trajectories and promotes healthy STEM identity development. This conceptual piece examines critical hip-hop pedagogy and funds of identity asset framework as a method to explore the impact of power dynamics in STEM classrooms. We hope to reconceptualize the movement of power from a different perspective, thus establishing a platform in which underrepresented students in STEM fields can activate their knowledge towards a healthy STEM identity.

Author

• Jessica McClain, Indiana University - Bloomington