Can I Kick it? Piloting a Hip-Hop Based Tool for Active Listening

• In Event: "Not Like Us": Using Hip Hop Sensibilities to Broaden Notions of Knowledge, Expertise, and How to Disseminate It

Abstract

This ongoing study describes the creation of a new interactive survey, where educators critically engage with a student-recorded Hip Hop song and are assessed on their readiness to hear/appraise student abilities. Drawing on research suggesting the use of hip-hop as a narrative tool, educators were asked to identify whether American School Counselor Association’s Mindsets and Behaviors (ASCA, 2020) were displayed within various student hip-hop lyrics. While a deluge of research has assessed the impact of hip-hop interventions on counseling outcomes for youth, few studies have explored what competence in hip-hop culture looks like for educators (Levy & Lemberger-Truelove, 2021), and the impact one’s age, race and gender have on one’s ability to authentically engage with hip-hop-identified youth (Levy, 2021; Rawls & Petchauer, 2020). Investigating this specific gap in the research, the purpose of this study is to assess what variables might impact an educator's ability to identify ASCA mindsets and behaviors within student-produced hip-hop lyrics.

The Hip Hop Active Listening Scale (HHALS) is an instrument designed to assess a participant’s ability to adequately appraise students' mindsets and behaviors. Using all of the ASCA competencies for youth development as a rubric, the HHALS asks participants to review snippets of a high school student’s hip-hop lyrics and rate the presence and degree of strength of any existing mindsets and behaviors. Participants were asked to separately review 7 different lyric snippets from a student-produced hip-hop song and assess the degree to which they believed any of the 29 ASCA competencies existed. The survey enabled participants to both hear the audio clip of the song and read the lyrics.

Participants were asked a series of demographic and background characteristic questions at the front end of the online survey including identifying their profession (school counselor or other), setting (high school, middle school, elementary school, other), years in the profession, race/ethnicity, gender, and knowledge of hip-hop. Knowledge of hip-hop was rated on a 4 point scale including far below average, somewhat below average, somewhat above average, and far above average. Below average items were labeled as Not Knowledgeable, and above average items were labeled as Knowledgeable. The researchers also grouped participants based on years practiced.

The results of this study offer powerful insight into educators' readiness to engage with students' hip-hop lyrics as a vehicle for teaching and learning. The goal of any educator who is seeking to utilize hip-hop practices is to be able to see and appreciate hip-hop for all of its cultural assets and complexities, to support our collective aim to center youth’s strengths and decenter deficit or weakness lenses within education. Towards this end educators, both hip-hop identified and not, are in need of additional support as they work to maintain their ability to listen to and appraise Black and Brown youth's behaviors, by engaging with youth’s stories (via lyrics or other cultural productions) as a medium. The current study helps to validate a culturally responsive, and youth production centered tool, that can help move educators closer to being ready to engage in authentic Hip Hop pedagogy.

Authors

• Ian Levy, Rutgers University

• Michael Lipset, McGill University

• Timothy D. Jones, HipHopEd