How the Kids Made Me a Scientist: Mentorship, Science Genius, and Hip-Hop

• In Event: 52.012 - High School Students as Social Justice Researchers, Connecting Praxis and Theory: A New Generation Emerging

Abstract

The dialogue surrounding much of hip-hop education is overwhelmingly focused on rap music and its validation as an academic tool. This presentation acknowledges the academic potential of rap, but aims at uncovering areas of convergence with school and developing means of linking the two together. By positioning hip-hop and the youth who are immersed in the culture as embodying scientific reasoning opens up a space for the validation of hip-hop pedagogy for not only science, but other STEM disciplines. This presentation highlights ways young adults from the hip-hop generation (ages 17-24) became science enthusiasts by becoming cultural brokers between hip-hop youth (ages 14-18) and their science teachers. Furthermore, the presentation showcases how a hip-hop centered pedagogy opens up the space for new mentors, active engagement in science, and a more communal/community focused instruction.

Science and hip-hop are cultural phenomena steeped in tradition, with distinct practices, guided by complex rules of engagement, and require unique ways of looking at the world (Emdin, 2010). Science is founded on the quest for questions and answers about the world and how it works (Shonkoff, 2000), and hip-hop is the means through which those who are locked into certain physical and symbolic spaces express their own questions and answers about their lifeworlds (Seidel, 2012). This connection between hip-hop and science has tremendous implications for teaching and learning when one goes beyond the content of rap and the everyday work of scientists, and instead examine the skills, dispositions, and ways of knowing of both hip-hop youth and scientists. For example, scientists make keen observations, ask deep questions, use analytical skills, exhibit curiosity, and provide evidence (Doris, 1991). These same traits are found in rappers, deejays, graffiti artists and b-boys within hip-hop (Stovall, 2006).

This presentation features youth volunteers helping teachers implement a hip-hop based science rap competition (Science Genius B.A.T.T.L.E.S.) to discuss how that their roles as “hip-hop culture ambassadors” were expanded to include science expert and co-teacher over the course of the project. The “Science Genius B.A.T.T.L.E.S.” is an initiative focused on utilizing the power of hip-hop music and culture to introduce youth to the wonder and beauty of science by meeting urban youth traditionally disengaged in science classrooms on their cultural turf, providing them with opportunities to express the same passion they have for hip-hop culture for science and meet science enthusiasts withe a passion for hip-hop.

Students in selected schools across New York City created science-themed raps on topics decided upon by the project sponsors (scientists, educators, and Hip-Hop icon GZA). The raps became part of a competition within and across schools. The raps covered topics aligned to the New York State Science Learning Standards, and Core Curriculum. The volunteers working with youth as well as youth participants will present posters on the ways that having “non-scientists” from their community in the classroom helped them to learn science better, impacting both their motivation and the scientific knowledge they learned.

Author

• Christopher Emdin, Teachers College, Columbia University