Hip-Hop Development Theory Within Hip-Hop Praxis Pedagogy

• In Event: Hip-Hop Pedagogy and Teacher Education for the Next 50 Years: Interrogating the Tensions in the Arcs and Trajectories of Hip-Hop

Abstract

Urban youth of color are oppressed in too many educational systems worldwide. Traditional pedagogies that lack cultural relevance are the norm, placing this population at a disadvantage. This chapter offers the sociocultural cognitive Hip Hop Development Theory (HHD), an approach to transformative teaching, as a framework for successful pedagogy, learning, and youth engagement. The theory’s principles, curvilinear pathways/formal features, core components, and root elements in successful Hip Hop praxis pedagogy are discussed. AKUVA (Acknowledgment, Knowledge, Use, Value and Application) of the theory’s four main themes is proposed. A cipher activity from the evidence-based Hip-Hop 2 Prevent Substance Abuse and HIV/AIDS (H2P) program provides a Hip Hop praxis pedagogy example. The chapter concludes with a discussion about the need for a Hip Hop praxis pedagogy that is liberatory, ratchetdemic, relevant, and contextualized within HHD. The strengths and gifts of students become evident and acknowledged, and they willingly engage as their true and authentic selves.

Author

• P. Thandi Hicks Harper, Youth Popular Culture Institute, Inc.