Using the Connected Learning framework as a lens to frame my research inquiry, this dissertation explores the potential of Hip-Hop songwriting and recording practices as a new form of music education in elementary schools. Using data from three years of ethnographic study I have collected while working as a youth advocate and educational consultant on the South and West sides of Chicago, I investigate the pedagogical and interpretive lens offered by Foundations of Music’s Songwriting and Production Program (SWP) in Chicago Public Schools. By observing youth participant processes, contradictions, and negotiations as they challenged traditional forms of music education, my findings show that participants in this program extracted critical lessons about mainstream media, self-empowerment and race/racism within their classroom experiences. As an in-depth case study, this study seeks to understand the habits, ideas and meaning-making that happens for Black youth within a formal Hip-Hop Based Music Education program. Subsequently, I argue that engaging Hip-Hop music is both a viable artistic practice and a framework to teach media literacy in modern urban education, particularly within predominantly African American communities. I also contend that SWP participants utilized their interest in Hip-Hop music in multiple and overlapping ways. Youth in this program used Hip-Hop to make sense of their daily lives, understand their position in the broader U.S racial/ethnic hierarchy and critically incorporate their ethnic/cultural identities within official school dialogues and curricula in empowering ways. Overall, my findings suggest that by implementing programs using Hip-Hop as an artistic practice in the classroom, Black youth are encouraged to confront (and overcome) racial and learning inequity in their daily lives, develop new literacies and cultivate positive identities that can extend into adulthood. I conclude this dissertation by suggesting that the learning equity gap in low-income communities of color could better be combatted if school administrators valued Hip-Hop culture as a resource for teaching advanced media literacy, encouraging civic mindsets and connecting academic engagement to the informal learning interests of Black youth.

Creator

• Evans, Jabari Miles

DOI

• https://doi.org/10.21985/n2-g2a5-f970

Subject

• Music education
• Communication
• Multicultural education

Language

• en

Alternate Identifier

• http://dissertations.umi.com/northwestern:15514
• etdadmin_upload_811564

Keyword

• African American Youth
• Hip-Hop
• Music Education
• Connected Learning
• Race and Equity
• Media Literacy

Date created

• 2021-01-01

Resource type

• Dissertation

Rights statement

• In Copyright