Musical Works From Hawai‘i Hip-Hop Artist/Activists Enrich Hawai‘i Preservice Teachers' Engagement With Multicultural Education Principles

• In Event: The Cypher: Resistance and Liberation in Pedagogical Praxis

Abstract

Hawaii is unique in its diverse cultural and racial landscape, and how bias and injustice manifest, requiring that teachers be highly competent in identifying and addressing our context-specific forms of bias and injustice. In an introductory multicultural education course for pre-service teachers, seminal works in multicultural education were juxtaposed with musical works from a cadre of Hawaii Hip-Hop artist-activists including Native-Hawaiian artist-activists currently resisting colonization (i.e., political suppression, physical displacement, cultural erasure), and other artist-activists who have relocated to Hawaii fleeing persecution and racism in other parts of the world. Analyzing text-to-text reading and listening reflections, we illustrate how Hip-Hop artist-activists' personal accounts of struggle for survival and self-determination were beneficial in prospective teachers’ learning of multicultural education principles.

Authors

• Keith G. Cross

• Charmaine Mangram, University of Hawai‘i at Manoa