The Use of Battle Rap As a Way to Engage Students in STEM
Jamie Parker
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy under the Executive Committee of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
2020 © 2020 Jamie Parker All Rights Reserved ABSTRACT
The Use of Battle Rap As a Way to Engage Students in STEM
Jamie Parker
This qualitative, multi-case study examined the process of lyric creation and nontraditional modes of communication (using themes from hip-hop and battle rap) as a mechanism for developing a teaching and learning strategy in STEM education. This manuscript style dissertation, examines the experiences of 24 postsecondary students and five battle rappers who created science-themed lyrics, used them as a learning strategy, and delivered content in a college and community setting. Insights into teaching and learning were revealed through the study of these lyrics from a constructivist and intellectual warrior theoretical framework. This research showed that as a result of utilizing battle rap, learning spaces were improved. Students’ interviews, lyrics, and reflections uncovered that they appreciated the opportunity to be more creative in class were more engaged, communicated and networked more than they did in their traditional science classroom. The battle rappers discussed and displayed the characteristics that allow them to engage audiences in hopes that teachers can learn how to incorporate engaging techniques within their own classrooms. Through interviews and a performance, battle rappers’ attempt to keep students engaged revealed their transparency; ability to freestyle; get hyped; and demonstrate charisma, presence, character, and energy. This information helped to explain, describe, and understand the experiences of both students and battle rappers and their potential relationships to science and the community. This work supports arguments for the use of culture
(art/music/experiences) through music in the science classroom. TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF TABLES ...... vi
LIST OF FIGURES ...... vii
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... viii
DEDICATION ...... x
GLOSSARY ……………………………………………………………………………………xi
Chapter I – INTRODUCTION...... 1
My Story..………………..………………………………………………………..1
Background of The Problem Retention…..……………………………………….7
Teacher Development ...... 7
Engaging Students ...... 12
Cultural Engagement ...... 15
Research Questions ...... 18
The Focus and Organization of this Dissertation ...... 18
Chapter II – LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 21
The Current State of STEM Education in the United States ...... 21
History of Music in Education ...... 26
History of Hip-hop ...... 29
Battle Rap ...... 30
Science Content-based Music ...... 35
Benefits of Music ...... 36
Rhythm ...... 37
i Brain Anatomy and Functionality ...... 37
Memory and Mnemonics ...... 39
STEM and STEAM ...... 41
Science Genius ...... 46
Barriers to Learning ...... 49
Underutilized Time Before Class ...... 50
Competitive Speech (Argumentation, Forensic Discourse, and Debate) ...... 51
Battle Pedagogy ...... 53
College Students ...... 55
Diversity ...... 56
Engagement vs. Content ...... 57
The Mental Health of Future STEM Professors ...... 60
Being Black in America ...... 61
Conceptual Framework ...... 64
Cultural melding: A new age of Reason ...... 64
Constructivism ...... 66
Intellectual Warrior ...... 67
Chapter III – METHODOLOGY ...... 72
Rationale for Qualitative Research Design ...... 72
Rationale for Case Study Methodology ...... 73
Methodology ...... 75
Data Collection ...... 75
ii Data Analysis ...... 76
Validity...... 79
A Study in Two Parts ...... 80
Chapter IV – THE USE OF BATTLE RAP TO EXPLORE NEW WAYS OF
ENGAGING STUDENTS IN STEM AND SCHOOL ...... 81
Abstract ...... 81
Introduction ...... 81
Conceptual Framework ...... 85
Research Questions ...... 88
Methods ...... 88
Battle Rap Professionals Setting ...... 88
Professional Battle Rap Procedure ...... 89
Professional Battle Rap Data Analysis ...... 90
Battle Rappers Findings ...... 91
Part 1. The Battle Rappers and Their School Experiences ...... 91
The Four Battle Rappers ...... 91
Criticality About Schooling ...... 93
Financial And Mental Stability ...... 97
Promotes Academic Engagement ...... 100
Develops Effective Communication ...... 104
Part 2. The Battle Rappers Performance ...... 107
Unexpected Event ...... 107
iii The Battle ...... 107
After The Battle Performance ...... 108
Battle Rappers Discussion ...... 109
Battle Pedagogy ...... 112
Conclusion ...... 115
Chapter V – ENGAGING UNDERGRADUATE SCIENCE STUDENTS THROUGH .....
HIP-HOP: BATTLE RAP AND/AS REVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE ...... 118
Abstract ...... 118
Introduction...... 118
Conceptual Framework ...... 120
Research Questions ...... 123
Methods ...... 123
Setting ...... 123
Student Participants ...... 125
Student Procedures ...... 127
Student Data Collection ...... 128
Data Analysis ...... 129
Findings ...... 129
Student Battle Raps and Reflections on Battle Rap ...... 129
Student Art Project and Reflections ...... 141
Battle Rap Performance (Fall) ...... 146
Battle Rap Performances (Spring) ...... 148
iv Reasons Why Students Chose to Be Science Majors ...... 150
Take A Test, Write A 10-Page Paper, Or Perform A Song ...... ….151
Discussion ...... 157
Conclusion ...... 161
Chapter VI SUMMARY AND REMARKS……………………………………………166
Major Findings ...... 166
Implications of This Research ...... 168
Intentions ...... 170
Critiques of Hip-hop ...... 170
Limitations of the Study ...... 173
Future Research ...... 174
REFERENCES ...... 176
v LIST OF TABLES
Table
1 Summary Data Collection ...... 78
2 Biology Courses Studied ...... 124
3 Student Participants ...... 126
vi LIST OF FIGURES
Figure
1 Sample student artwork ...... 147
2 Student L’s artwork ...... 150
3 Rap battle flyer ...... 151
4 Email response to performance ...... 160
5 Professor’s reaction to performance ...... 161
vii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I want to start off by thanking my committee members. Dr. Christopher Emdin believed in me enough to allow me to work with him as he reshapes the way people around the world perceive STEM and the way it is taught. His guidance has been a true blessing and I don’t know how I could ever repay him. Dr. Yolanda Sealey-Ruiz has been a breath of fresh air since the day we met, she joined my committee with open arms and it was more than what I needed at the time. She is an inspiration to me and to everyone she interacts with. Dr. Shirley Steinberg’s understanding of where I am mentally and emotionally has meant more to me than she knows.
She has an acute ability to spot an issue before it arises and help me be prepared to face it. Dr.
Felicia Mensah’s willingness to be there for me in times I needed support was immeasurable.
Her level of dedication to her field, and care for the students under her watch, should truly be recognized and is under appreciated in my opinion. I am grateful to Dr. Josef Sorett for joining my committee and offering amazing insight which truly helped me understand the complexity of my work and better ways to frame it.
I want to also acknowledge my mother for helping me with printing, birthing me and helping me become the man that I am. I want to acknowledge Precious for her assistance in helping me transcribe data and her insight into different projects. John and Ode for helping me record interviews. Natalia, Anna, Matilde and Avery for helping me publish previous work. The
Wright and Burrison family for helping me grow in business. Ioan, Lunzy and Horace for providing me with perspectives on life that were more necessary than they thought.
To Kenny, the Aytch family, and Cassaberry family for supporting me when I felt unsupported. To Gregory, for being the best brother I could ask for. To my Reebok/Equinox/
viii Blink family for providing a second home for me and helping me take my mind off of working hard all of the time. I am also thankful to Fordham University, Fordham STEP, the University of
Akron and Lehman College for giving me the opportunity to educate their students and for working with me in more ways than one. To Marcia and Grant for showing me a world I was truly unaware of. To my Tilden and Ohio family. To Chris, Aaron, Rich, Ernest, Shawn, Caleb,
Dr. Bamshad, Dr. Lizardi, Dr. Sharp, Ernest, Nadine, Rodney, Jovanna, Alex, Patrick, Shahid,
Manny, Molly, Rochelle, Kendall, Anoeska, Dr. Brathwaite. Dr. Sosa, Dr. Alyousef and Dr.
Sharp. To the entire Parker and Manning family, Thank you. Most importantly, thank you Dr.
Bernice Rumala, had you not introduced me to Dr. Emdin, I am uncertain where my life would be right now.
ix DEDICATION
To the disenfranchised and marginalized youth who never felt valued in the eyes of the media, peers, school or society; this is for you.
x Glossary
This is a list of terms used throughout this manuscript. They are defined through my own understanding of each word or phrase.
Battle rap – A type of hip-hop performance where each competes directly with one another, typically on a stage. One person performs, followed by another in an open forum. There are opportunities to rebut what the other person says in rhyme, which is not typical in regular hip-hop performance where each artist has his own song/verse. Participants who are rapping/ performing may include bragging, insults, and/or harsh critique of their opponents life and /or performance.
Battle/Battling – Can occur on recorded albums, though rap battles are often recited or freestyled spontaneously in live battles, where MCs will perform on the same stage to see who has the better verses.
Beat - A rhythmic movement or the speed at which a piece of music is played. An example of beat is the beating of a heart. It can be created with the mouth or an instrument, it can be an electronic beat, or it can come naturally, such as water dripping, beat just feels and sounds right. Beats are an infinite creation and have endless combinations of ways people are engaged.
When different beats and sounds are combined, they can create a unique melody and people can dance to a beat. The notion of beats is traced to African roots.
Black and Brown – Terms that refer to individuals of African American, West Indian,
African, and Latinx (see below) descent.
xi Black Feminism and Hip-hop – The essential area of Black Feminism is often overlooked through misogyny in the music and videos of hip-hop, where women are viewed as objects. Few women make decisions in the industry and male perspectives typically hold much power. This, in turn, shapes the culture and affects the way men view women and women view men. This relationship is based on what a man can do for the woman, not on what they can do for each other.
Break Dancing - A form of dance attached to African heritage that is energetic, athletic, and rhythmic, origins from on-the-street dancing and performing.
Culturally Relevant Pedagogy - A student-centered approach to teaching to the students’ unique cultural strengths; these strengths are identified and nurtured in order promote student achievement and a sense of well-being about their own cultural place in the world.
Cypher– A form in freestyling where one individual raps, then another involving 2 or more individuals rap. Interrupting another rapper will break that cypher (unless he is next in line and the dude behind him is falling off).
Diss/Dissing – A statement in the form of a joke or stern voice, usually done by friends to make light of something known to all or a few about an individual or a situation or thing to which they are close. At times, what a person shares can be considered offensive depending on the tone.
Emcee/MC – Individual who oversees audience entertained at the event. Sometimes the
MC rhymes or encourages the crowd to participate in the festivities by moving their bodies a certain way or making sounds with their mouths.
xii Flow - A pattern of sound that complements and is in sync with other sounds around it. A beat, a voice, or other aspects of life can have flow.
Freestyling – A rhyme a person creates within the moment, improvising without previous writing; freestyling can also be a rhyme someone shares that he or she chooses to perform at that moment.
Gangsta – Derived from the word gangster, someone who is willing to go to jail or die for his neighborhood, community, family, or friends, but will do anything to survive even if it is illegal; possibly a member of a gang and willing to die to defend its name.
Graffiti/Tagging - A form of visual art that can be done with any form of pencil, marker, or paint to express how the individual feels or to express a nickname they go by. Often, graffiti was written on trains, buildings, and other public places because people were forgotten in society and wanted to be seen somehow. Tagging is writing one’s own name or initials to brand and claim a space.
Hip-hop – A social-political movement created in the late 1970s (origin: South Bronx
Black/ Puerto Rican); a culture which gives people who grew up in the ghetto voice; songs in hip-hop are spoken from personal experience. Songs are usually mixed with other genres of music like rock and classical (piano), or with record players and scratchers (see below).
Intellectual warrior - An individual who is willing to sacrifice his or her positionality to assist self or others, despite criticism from peers, strangers, or enemies. This phrase was originated by Joe Lyons Kincheloe (2006) as he observed Black and Brown youth being neglected by the education system yet fighting an uphill battle despite backlash from teachers and neighbors for acting White by attempting to educate themselves.
xiii Latinx - Refers to Cuban, Mexican, Puerto Rican, South or Central American, etc., a
Spanish culture/origin regardless of race. This term is meant to be gender-neutral and can be used as singular or plural.
Old School Hip-hop Artists/OGs – Old School refers to individuals who made timeless music, original hip-hop, which many still play, or to who paved the way to make hip-hop an epicenter of today’s music industry. These people are also referred to as OGs (Old Gangstas) or
Hip-hop Elders. People like Public Enemy, KRS-One, Nas, and Big Daddy Kane are all considered Old School. Icons like Jay Z, Biggie, and Tupac took what their predecessors created and used their music to help people of color understand that they are not alone in their experiences and thoughts.
One Mic - One person speaks/rhymes at a time while everyone else remains quiet.
People understand when to begin speaking because the time feels right, or the speaker informs the others with a hand motion or sound. Term comes from the song “One Mic” by Nas: “One time, yeah, yeah…. Yo, all I need is one mic, one beat, one stage.”
Rap – Rhyming, rhythmic speaking/singing to a beat or music; a sound that embodies struggle, life, love, and all that someone can muster up and craft into a form for others to listen to. It can be hard core/gangsta or soft, but all styles involve rhyming words. Rap started in New
York City; people often try to out-rap others to prove they are the best at telling a story or expressing themselves, or even that they are the toughest person around. Rap can be with or without music and involves style, delivery, and charisma.
Rhyme – The skill of putting words together to impress others enough to make them want to continue to listen. It is important for some of the words to end with similar sounds so
xiv they can be rhymed together, although some people manipulate the ends of words to sound similar to each other. Rhyme in hip-hop can be internal (within sentences or words), or with the final word. For example, T-Pain created the word Wiscansin to rhyme it with Mansion. The original word was Wisconsin, but the new word is similar enough to understand the connection and sounds like Mansion allows the song to flow.
Science Genius – A program started by Dr. Christopher Emdin (Teachers College,
Columbia University) to give secondary students, particularly in STEM, an opportunity to incorporate music into their science class with the hope that it will make them more engaged and creative. At the end of the semester, they compete against each other and build camaraderie. The overall goal is to encourage students to pursue a career in STEM by engaging them in with the music they identify with, hip-hop (their own cultures), and creating a song/rap out of their chosen major.
Scratching/Scratchers - a turntablist technique of moving a vinyl record back and forth on a turntable to produce percussive or rhythmic sounds
Urban Youth or Urban Youth of Color – In the context of this work, urban youth of color refers to disenfranchised Black and Brown individuals between the ages of 9 and 21, raised in high-population neighborhoods and lower socioeconomic backgrounds.
Youth - Boys or girls ranging loosely from ages 9 to 22 of any ethnicity.
xv Chapter I
INTRODUCTION
My Story
I was born in the Bronx, New York, raised by my mother who raised my older brother and me. The Bronx is globally known as the birthplace of hip-hop culture. Hip-Hop is a complex culture/phenomenon that encompasses music, art and a number of sensibilities that are developed through an engagement in/with urban America. It can be described as a space for marginalized Black and Brown folks to navigate systemic forms of oppression and/or find release from the stressors in their environments through the elements of rap, b-boying, graffiti and DeeJaying.
In the single parent household where I was raised, my brother and I often joked that for
Father’s Day, my mother should get a gift since she was the only parent who was there. Although my mother did her very best to guide me, there were certain areas where a young man needs a man’s input. For me, that male input came from hip-hop artists. Hip-hop music felt like me, sounded like me; we were intimately related, indeed, I could argue that hip-hop helped to raise me. Hip-hop was the father I never had. It has been noted that the masculinity in hip-hop is problematic, and I agree. However, I argue that embedded masculinity in hip-hop should be critiqued with a consideration of its impact on the identity construction of boys and its positive impacts. I also suggest that the male voice in hip-hop has a power that grounds young people in search for direction and connects them to a larger family when one isn’t present. Rapper
Papoose is quoted as saying, “If my lyrics inspired you to do something greater, influenced your behavior, then who’s your creator?” Papoose suggests that his music has helped to create others
1 or versions of themselves that previously didn’t exist. This concept of creating a self is at the anchor of the ideas within this dissertation. The overarching question of my research asks: How does hip-hop (or aspects of it shape/create young people who see themselves as scientists and how could hip-hop create science professors who are more culturally attuned to students? I argue that hip-hop can emotionally connect those who engage in/with it and can therefore, support pedagogy.
Hip-hop taught me what love is, showed me what it was like to express my feelings, and taught me that I was not the only male of color concerned about supporting his family. Despite many life lessons, there were also some things that hip-hop did not teach me. It did not teach me how to prepare properly for an exam, how to interact with the many educators who did not share my culture, and how to deal with the many microaggressions that are par-for-the-course when pursuing an education and career.
Although I went to class every day in high school, I did not learn a lot of academic content; however, I did learn that I saw the world similarly with many of my peers. Hip-hop was/ is a significant part of who we all were. In my current role as a researcher, I reflect on my high school experience and wonder why I continued to go to a place where my learning was not being enhanced. Was attending school merely societal pressure? Today, I would argue that this was the case. I also suggest that this may be the case for thousands of other young people who are navigating urban science classrooms.
I recall a time in high school, when a neighborhood friend who frequented my house randomly looked at one of my assignments and exclaimed, “You write how you talk, no one writes like that,” and he laughed at me. I sat bewildered and asked myself: “Who can’t
2 understand how I talk? Everyone around me fully comprehends me.” It was not until 17 years later when I realized that my friend was making a distinction between how we speak and the inappropriateness of our speech in academic spaces. My friend was not used to reading the work of another person of color or seeing our words (the way we spoke) on paper. Our unique syntax and slang seemed to not be created for writing but only for speaking. I concluded that if writing how one talks is taboo, subconsciously there must be a taboo or lack of value in how we speak. It is a challenge for youth from urban America to exist in a world where their speech and writing are seen as inferior. They are then forced to express brilliance (something other than themselves) on an exam. If academic brilliance is not expressed in a way that is recognized by the educator, the student is relegated to an existence where he or she is never seen as brilliant. From personal experience, I can attest to the fact that this is a reality. I am a victim of this type of educational trauma and experience it even as I engage in this exercise of putting together a dissertation.
Traumas inflicted on most people of color are complex and deep; often, they do not have the “appropriate” vocabulary to express their experiences. For me, it was decades later when I heard someone articulate my experiences. I heard the story of my trauma story and responded,
“Me too, that’s me.” I did not fully understand the trauma inflicted upon my psyche until I entered a doctoral program at Teachers College, Columbia University, and was able to see my experiences through the lens of the theories of prominent scholars. When I was able to make sense of culturally relevant pedagogy, Pretty Brown girl syndrome, and cosmopolitanism
(Emdin, 2016; Ladson-Billings, 2000)—terms I was previously unfamiliar with, I realized what had been either missing from, or not incorporated into my education. This is the reason that I am exploring the use of battle rap as a tool for improving science education. I hope to provide a lens
3 for looking at science education that will give others the powerful ideas I have been exposed to on my doctoral journey.
For my undergraduate and master’s degrees, I studied Biology and Neuroscience. Before coming to Teachers College, I was working towards my PhD in Akron, Ohio, studying Integrated
Bioscience. In a science major, it didn’t matter much how well I spoke or wrote. I had to have a command of the content, and I was perceived as not only competent, but brilliant. When I stumbled into science at Lehman College, I felt academically successful for the first time in my life and then I pursued a doctoral degree. In Akron, I thrived in the sciences and was making great strides towards completing my degree. My doctoral advisor allowed my conceptual understanding of science to be the benchmark through which I was assessed. Again, it didn’t matter how I spoke or how I wrote, all that mattered was how effective I was in the laboratory.
Unfortunately, my advisor left Akron before I finished my degree and moved to Texas. Suddenly, my academic world came crashing down. My scientific knowledge was not going to help me in finding another advisor. No one was researching with the same animals as me, and building a relationship with a new advisor was challenging because neither the faculty nor the doctoral students looked or sounded like me. The traumas from my high school experience emerged again. In turn, I am not sure if I isolated myself or if others isolated me. All I understood was that
I felt they were communicating: Don’t come near us for anything. Years later, some doctoral students eventually sued the school for discrimination, and I felt somewhat vindicated; but I still was lost and felt like I did in high school; like I did not belong in academia or in science.
Listening to battle rap is one activity that helped get me through feeling isolated during my traumatic time in the PhD program in Ohio. Battle rap is a form of hip-hop that involves a
4 rhythmic oral exchange between two or more individuals in a back-and-forth format. The purpose of the battle rap performance is to “outwit, outflow, and demean the other, usually before an engaging audience” (Mavima, 2015, p. 86). Listening to battle rappers discuss their experiences with racism, neglect, and strength helped me find solace as I navigated academia. I was deeply engaged, saw myself in the performers, and used their performances as a model for how to navigate a world where I felt less than. Watching battle rappers helped me realize that I had to develop the ability to express my authentic self. I was seeing myself as less than, struggling to find a laboratory to research in, and exhibiting and experiencing immense self- doubt as I tried to find my way. In some odd way, I was envious that these battle rappers could be unapologetically authentic and fully whole as Black men. Most importantly, I wondered what it would have been like to have that sense of self when I was a student. It was then that I decided that I would search for a space where I could use my scientific knowledge and newfound belief in the power and potential of hip-hop and battle rap to make a difference in the lives of young people who come from similar neighborhoods and share the same experiences that I do. I decided that my content knowledge, passion for learning and discoveries of cultural approaches to communicating could inform the field of science education.
After studying the landscape of urban education and discovering the research of hip-hop scholars who made the same natural conclusions that I did about transforming education through hip-hop, a fire was ignited within me. I felt that there must be some comfort in the discomfort others feel when they interact with a scholar who does not fit the traditional mold. It is not for me to come down fully to a level for them to comprehend; it is for other scholars to come up and meet me where I am. Emdin (2019) argued that individuals should embrace their authentic self,
5 even if it is different from the societal norm, and couple that with their educational side in order to feel whole. I expand that argument and suggest that more whole and engaged classrooms require more authentic methods of engagement that are modeled in battle rap.
Being around hip-hop educators at Teachers College when I entered a doctoral program in education was a significant change in my life. I never had either a Black male college professor or a Black advisor before. The experience was like looking into a mirror. My intellectual journey involved discussions about racism, oppression, hip-hop, and effective teaching methods—topics I had never dared discuss with others throughout my 16-plus years of postsecondary education. Up until this point, many of my closest relationships at schools (higher education or otherwise) were with security guards, janitorial staff, or administrators. Seldom did
I develop bonds with my teachers, particularly given our differences in culture and ideologies. I discovered that sharing the same culture does not necessarily mean two individuals will get along, but that it can ease the process of learning (Hofstede,1984).
While taking courses on hip-hop and the cultural studies of science education, I found articles on academic work that incorporated hip-hop or aspects of it into science classes for middle to high school students (Emdin, 2013, 2015, 2016). While taking education courses, I taught science at a local college where it became clear to me that hip-hop could benefit both postsecondary education professors and students in the same way that it had impacted K-12 education. I began studying the pedagogical strategies employed by battle rappers and explored the inner workings of battle rap beyond the connection that came just from being naturally drawn to it. In this dissertation, I explore battle rap pedagogy and its connection to student engagement and retention in STEM.
6 Background of the Problem Retention
Only about 40% of the three million students who enter U.S. colleges annually and who intend to major in a STEM discipline actually stay in STEM until graduation (PCAST 2012), with the individuals who leave the field at the highest rates being “underrepresented minorities”.
People from racial and ethnic groups who are underrepresented in STEM majors make up 68% of the college students in the United States (Seymour & Hewitt, 1997). For instance, African
American students who plan to study STEM change to a non-STEM field before graduation twice as regularly as White students (National Academy of Sciences, 2012). These realities in postsecondary education suggest that educators take a hard look at research and practice that retains students in STEM. In particular, the field of science education needs a focus on interventions that can address the retention of STEM majors and methods for introducing/ improving teaching strategies employed by education professors that reflect an understanding of how to engage and retain students through unique pedagogical methods and a focus on instructor development.
Teacher Development
Policymakers and funders are paying close attention to the effectiveness of undergraduate
STEM instruction, and particularly to which teaching practices are proven efficient by research and practice and how faculty learn to adopt instructional practices that engage more students
(Henderson, Beach, & Finkelstein, 2011; Kober, 2015; National Research Council [NRC], 2012).
The Association of American Universities (AAU) recognized this deficiency within undergraduate STEM education. When AAU created a 5-year reform, four of its five policy goals
7 focused on improving teaching in STEM courses (AAU, 2014). Efforts to enhance postsecondary instruction have typically focused on current faculty; however, more attention is being given to how future faculty are being prepared to assume scholastic roles and other educational duties
(e.g., Austin, 2010; Hershock, Groscurth, & Milkova, 2011; Hopwood & Stocks, 2008; Kalish et al., 2011; Palmer, 2011; Schönwetter & Ellis, 2010; Wulff & Austin, 2004; Wurgler,
VanHeuvelen, Rohrman, Loehr, & Grace, 2013).
Undergraduate students in STEM are generally taught by professors who have earned their doctorate (Lee & Gardner, 2010). Earning a doctorate in STEM can take 3 to 10 years, and it is noted that the United States has some of the best doctoral programs in the world (Park,
Lubinski, & Camilla, 2008). Some doctoral students’ programs are fully paid for by the university and students are given a stipend. Some programs must be paid out of pocket, and some doctoral students are offered teaching positions in exchange for their university covering the cost of their doctoral tuition (Rosen, 1987). While a doctoral STEM student’s route to completing a doctorate can vary, one point that has yet to waver is the amount of emphasis placed on the ability to publish quality research in high-impact journals (Park et al., 2008).
Doctoral training in STEM fields has traditionally consisted of a doctoral student working intimately with a faculty advisor to assist in becoming familiar with the research methods and requisite knowledge that are essential to the discipline (Anderson et al., 2011; Walker, Golde,
Jones, Bueschel, & Hutchings, 2008). This apprenticeship model tends to accentuate the ability of doctoral students to develop into scholars and researchers; therefore, it does not directly prepare academic hopefuls to handle a full range of roles, pedagogical, and educational duties of
21st-century academics, including teaching (Austin & McDaniels, 2006; Feldon et al., 2011).
8 Accordingly, doctoral students have regularly reported feeling very certain about their research abilities, yet far less confident about instructing and educational duties (Golde & Dore, 2001).
Only about half (46%) of the STEM doctoral students in the United States are associated with some sort of college teaching within 5 years of finishing a doctorate (Connolly, Savoy, Lee, &
Hill, 2016). Teacher development is needed, and is necessary, for the many doctoral students who will educate, train, and guide the next generation of STEM undergraduates (Connolly, Lee
& Savoy, 2018).
Teacher development can vary in duration and structure, but it seeks three reform- oriented outcomes: (a) to enhance the quality of undergraduate instruction by improving the pedagogical skills of those involved; (b) to allow for preparation that mirrors the full scope of faculty obligations; and (c) to adjust the culture and mindset within doctoral preparation to allow for undergraduate education to be recognized as important (Austin & Wulff, 2004; Gaff &
Lambert, 1996; Goldsmith, Haviland, Dailey, & Wiley 2004). Becoming a postsecondary education professor with tenure is competitive, leaving most individuals to get jobs in private research laboratories or the government, or to become entrepreneurs (Luciana & Ernesto, 2005).
According to Figueroa (2015), because PhD programs are stressful and tiring, we might infer that
STEM doctoral students will not voluntarily spend time learning a craft that will not directly benefit the completion of their degree and may be unrealistic. Teaching is not a mandatory requirement for doctoral students to earn their doctorate, and the course work within doctoral programs is typically geared toward the individual’s research, meaning that most of the doctoral students time is spent gathering data for their research. These same doctoral students eventually become part of the teacher workforce who is charged with teaching the next generation of STEM
9 citizens. Some of these STEM professors have never been taught how to teach effectively or communicate their knowledge efficiently (Bolster, 1983). There is no doubt that these individuals grasp the content; however, a teacher who does not know how to create lesson plans that reflect the need to critically engage them and retain students in the discipline could be one reason why the retention rate is so low in STEM.
Teacher development programs within STEM attempt to address the fact most doctoral programs do not emphasize teaching. One program in particular is the National Academies
Summer Institute (NASI), which focuses on improving teaching practices in introductory, undergraduate biology courses. Teachers who participated in NASI increased their scientific teaching ability and were more confident in preparing lessons for their lectures (Pfund et al.,
2009). However, the extent to which that preparation addresses innovation in teaching that reflects non-traditional methods of engagement for the most marginalized students is questionable. Teachers should not have to wait until they have access to teacher development workshops for them to improve their learning. This is especially the case when culture and innovation are not significant aspects of their preparation. Studies have shown that incorporating more teacher-based instruction into the coursework of doctoral students’ programs improves their self-efficacy, teaching ability, and makes them more prepared to communicate about their research (Shortlidge & Eddy, 2018). More institutions are beginning to incorporate teacher development in their curriculum (Huber, 2016; Patel, 2017; Pfund et al., 2012); however, there has been little research on the effects of teacher development, especially on individuals preparing to be postsecondary instructors (Austin, 2010; Beach, Sorcinelli, Austin, & Rivard, 2016).
10 The lack of such data can affect doctoral students’ urge to participate in these programs and succinctly jeopardize the programs’ sustainability. Consequently, if developing more informed postsecondary education instructors is to advance the national STEM agenda, then the quality of information about the outcomes of general teacher development programs for STEM doctoral students needs to be improved. Another area that needs improvement is the selection criteria for teachers hired to teach STEM in the first place. The National Science Board (NSB) has stated that well-qualified and extremely effective teachers should teach STEM classes. They call for an increased amount of national attention to attract, prepare, and retain qualified and committed teaching candidates (NSB, 2007). Unfortunately, there is little research that details the prerequisite skills, beliefs, comprehension bases, and experiences pertinent for teachers to implement instruction (Fykholm & Glasson, 2005). Furthermore, tools for identifying instructors who understand the extreme need for retention strategies, methods for engagement, creativity in institutions, and overall willingness to use non-traditional methods creates a need for this study.
I argue that if current STEM professors took more teacher development courses, or if doctoral programs began to incorporate more courses around better teaching practices, the quality of STEM teaching and the programs in general would improve. I also suggest that creating opportunities for non-STEM related individuals to teach STEM to the larger public through a focus on cultural practice like hip-hop through battle rap may assist in addressing interest, retention, cultural relevance, and engagement in STEM. Graham (2013) identified three key elements that allow STEM programs to retain the students successfully under its care. One element is active learning in introductory courses, another is early research experiences, and the last is membership in STEM learning communities (Graham, 2013). Active learning should be
11 implemented to engage students in the learning process as it has been shown to reduce STEM attrition (Haak, HilleRisLambers, Pitre, & Freeman 2011). Active learning can be any activity in which each student is put in a position to think, create, or find a solution. Early research experiences are essential because students who participate in research in their first 2 years of college are more likely to continue as STEM majors (Nagda, Gregerman, Jonides, Von Hippel, &
Lerner 1998). Introductory experiences in STEM can happen through large scale public facing events like hip-hop themed STEM events. I argue that these type of events (that bring hundreds of people into a social space to both celebrate and learn may facilitate the development of informal learning communities). In addition, the process of writing and performing science themed raps supports a type of active learning that traditional STEM courses do not offer.
Engaging Students
Teaching tends to be viewed as a profession where practitioners have positive feelings about their work. However, some teachers do not experience that (Restructuring, 2006). They come to the profession wanting to accomplish great goals but are not equipped with the tools to do so (Bursal & Paznokas, 2006; NRC, 2007). Many teachers cannot maintain the students’ attention enough to deliver content effectively. By contrast, however, I have seen battle rappers
—who did not attend college—hold those same students’ attention for hours outside of school.
What are the battle rappers doing that the teachers are not? Why are students transfixed through headphones or videos on a battle rap performance while teachers cannot help them do the same?
Why is it that students seldom re-listen to their professors’ lectures, but will replay a battle rap over and over? Some may argue that it is the content of the battle rap. I do not believe this is the
12 case. I suggest that it is several things related to engagement, active learning, and methods of communication.
One goal of the research study this document is based on was to understand the factors that enable battle rappers who have no formal training in teaching to capture the attention of youth. Battle rap is a sub-culture within the culture of hip-hop that reflects an aspect of the larger culture with its own unique norms. According to Bascunan (2016), “hip-hop no longer influences the mainstream, it is the mainstream (time 0:37).” Although hip-hop was started by disenfranchised Black and Brown youth on the streets of the Bronx, hip-hop can now be observed on nationally aired commercials, sports, and television shows (Prince, 2007). Given that hip-hop is prevalent in so many different avenues in America, it is fitting for hip-hop to become a part of the education system eventually. I believe the aspect of hip-hop that focuses most on delivering information in a closed space for an audience of learners has the most potential for improving instruction in lecture halls that are similarly structured.
Significant numbers of American students who enter postsecondary education do not have their culture reflected in the material they are learning, or they do not feel as though the teachers maintain their interest while they are present (Keller, 2007). For students who have the opportunity to attend school, teachers owe it to them to make them feel welcome in the classroom. There must be a recognition that students learn in different ways (Garfield, 1995). I suggest that if we use a common language like hip-hop to communicate with students, it can help improve the education of White, Black, Latinx, and other cultures of students who either are part of hip-hop culture or are in need of a different approach to instruction outside of the existing norm (Broughton, 2017). For individuals who enter postsecondary education, studies have shown
13 that STEM majors yield the highest return on investment and the number of STEM jobs is increasing daily (Wyss, Heulskamp & Siebert, 2012). Part of my goal here is to create opportunities for more students from backgrounds that are underrepresented in STEM to have access to these opportunities.
Black and Brown students enter STEM majors in postsecondary education at the same rate as their White counterparts, yet Black and Brown students tend to switch majors or even leave college altogether at almost twice the rate of Whites (Riegle-Crumb, King, & Irizarry,
2019). If more teachers incorporated aspects of hip-hop into their lessons, there is a potential for the reduction of the attrition rate for Black and Brown as well as White students. This idea is supported by research in K-12 education around the concept of culturally relevant pedagogy – which encourages teachers to incorporate students’ own cultures within part of their learning experience (Ladson-Billings, 1995a, 1995b). Egalite, Kisida, andWinters (2015) argue that increasing Black and Brown teachers in postsecondary education may increase the retention rate of Black and Brown students). Unfortunately, sharing the same ethnicity does not guarantee that students will be able to relate to their teacher in a way that will increase their learning ability
(Ladson-Billings, 1999). White teachers currently make up a majority of the teaching staff in
STEM postsecondary education, whereas Black and Brown teachers are not as prevalent and often earn less pay (Li & Koedel, 2019). Teachers of all races should understand the cultural norms of different groups and allow them to influence the way teachers can structure their lessons (Richards, Brown, & Forde, 2007). They also may need to use more culturally rooted pedagogical approaches that may not directly reflect the culture of their students for the sake of using different methods of teaching altogether.
14 Teachers must recognize non-dominant culture and learn how to engage with it pedagogically (Gay & Howard, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 2009; Milner, 2011; Nieto, 2004). If a teacher is Black or Brown, this is not an indication that the teacher should automatically use elements of hip-hop in the classroom or advocate for it. And, just because a teacher is White does not mean the teacher should not use hip-hop in the classroom or be against it. Incorporating hip- hop, specifically aspects of battle rap, should be viewed as a mechanism for all teachers to engage with all students, creating culturally relevant pedagogies.
Cultural Engagement
Incorporating a students’ cultural identity into a classroom can increase engagement from those students (Vavrus, 2008). Increasing cultural diversity in methods of instruction is also possible for improving engagement. Culture consists of the customary beliefs, social forms, and material traits of a racial, religious, or social group (Merriam-Webster, n.d.). Based on this, hip- hop is considered a culture as it chronicles the lived experiences of Black and Brown youth. For the purposes of this dissertation, I focused on hip-hop and its sub-genres with a recognition that
Black and Brown youth do not see themselves or their views about inequities expressed in
America and created a mechanism for voice. Hip-hop has created mechanisms for self and community expression. As time has passed, more and more individuals regardless of background have found different reasons to appreciate hip-hop. Whether they resonated to the rhythm or word play, people of all races have come together to listen to the music and engage with what was being shared in musical form at a time when desegregation was still in its early stages
(Peoples, 2007).
15 Engagement is “the behavioral intensity and emotional quality of a person’s active involvement during a task” (Reeve, Jang, Carrell, Jeon, & Barch, 2004, p. 147). Students’ engagement consists of effort, concentration, and perseverance during learning activities. The emotional aspect of engagement includes students’ emotional participation during learning activities, such as enthusiasm, attentiveness, and enjoyment (Reeve et al., 2004; Skinner, Furrer,
Marchand, & Kindermann, 2008). In opposition to engagement, disengagement is evident in students who are passive and demoralized and can give up easily (Skinner et al., 2008; Skinner,
Saxton, Currie, & Shusterman, 2017). Engagement is an essential educational construct because it causes positive student results such as achievement, scholarly learning, aptitude advancement, and scholastic strength in various educational fields (Reeve, 2012; Skinner et al., 2008), including the STEM educational field (Bathgate & Schunn, 2017; Skinner et al., 2017).
Based on these definitions of engagement, I studied hours of battle rap performances to identify moments of engagement. I identified moments where in an hour long performance, participants are nodding along throughout, exclaiming loudly as they react to their favorite battle rapper saying something they like, or dancing/reacting to a particular line. My observations and data show that engagement occurs during these performances. Studies have shown that engagement can improve student learning and academic performance (Carini, Kuh, & Klein,
2006; Ewell, 2002; Klein, Kuh, Chun, Hamilton, & Shavelson, 2005; Pascarella & Terenzini,
2005). To date, there is evidence that hip-hop has benefits of positive learning outcomes in the classroom (Emdin, 2013, 2015; Emdin & Adjapong, 2016); although battle rap is a part of hip- hop, there is currently no published evidence of any aspect of battle rap having a positive outcome in a learning environment. Emdin and Adjapong (2016) noted that allowing secondary
16 students to make STEM based rhymes into a hip-hop song can improve STEM learning and increase retention rates for Black and Brown youth. If hip-hop works within the education system, why not incorporate battle rap into the education system as well?
It is clear that Black and Brown youth are not being retained within the STEM space
(Amin, 2008), and this should be an indication that innovation within STEM is needed (Amin,
2008). Black and Brown youth and their counterparts from other ethnic and racial backgrounds listen to battle rappers by the millions (Garland, 2012), with great attention and engagement, as indicated by their consistent ability to recite rhymes they have heard quickly. In battle rap, this recitation process happens almost immediately as a rapper shares a line, repeats it, and then the audience follows suit in a repetition of that line up to 45 minutes later. It appears that battle rappers are doing “something right” in holding these youth’s attention. The goal of my research, then, was to understand what that “something right” is when it comes to classroom learning.
What characteristics or mannerisms do battle rappers have that make their delivery so well received? Is it their body language, use of certain words, the context in which they use those words, their voice inflection, or any number of other qualities? As educators, we must trigger learning in all individuals. Incorporating aspects of battle rap into education can become one of the “hooks” that has been missing in urban American education.
17 Research Questions
According to Creswell (2007) and Yin (2009), research questions guiding case study inquiry should address “how” and “why” in order to better understand a phenomenon. I have identified two cases to explore. One where key characteristics of engaging youth are learned from battle rappers, and the other where postsecondary students battle rap in order to learn better modes of communication as well as mnemonics. My research questions indicate the intent to explore and illuminate an event (Yin, 2009). With these criteria in mind, the following research questions were used to guide this study:
1. What goes into the composition and delivery of an effective method of engaging with
an urban audience?
2. Which techniques do battle rappers implement that some teachers can begin to develop
to allow them to keep their students engaged?
3. How are battle rappers able to engage an audience using science content and how does
it differ from a typical instructor discussing science content in a classroom?
4. How can battle rap improve engagement within stem courses?
5. What ways can battle rap assist in learning STEM content?
6. Are there benefits of incorporating battle rap in academic spaces outside of learning
the material for that course?
The Focus and Organization of this Dissertation
My dissertation focused on understanding the aspects of battle rap music that can be used to improve an instructor’s ability to engage with students at a postsecondary school. My study
18 incorporates professional battle rappers, who through their notoriety have the ability to influence more individuals to think about STEM if they discussed STEM content more through rhyme or discussion. For the purposes of this study, my goal was to understand the mechanisms batttle rappers use to engage audiences and chronicle them so teachers can begin to understand these techniques. Another area of focus for this dissertation was understanding how incorporating battle rap music in postsecondary STEM courses would impact students.
The incorporation of music and the arts into STEM has often been termed STEAM in recent years. Incorporating the “A” into STEM symbolizes this integration as more educational networks recognize the importance of incorporating the arts into the education system. The origins of STEAM and programs that have incorporated music are discussed further in Chapter
2. However, it is important to note here that incorporating the arts into STEM rarely focuses on arts and culture. This work is unique in its use of art as a form of culture (in this case hip-hop culture) and the leveraging of culture into a STEM teaching strategy. For the purposes of this dissertation, I refer to STEAM on occasion; however, my point is to add artistic and cultural norms to STEM education (whether or not it is called STEAM).
This manuscript style dissertation includes six chapters which contains two studies, asking six main research questions within it. Chapter I was the introduction discussing my story, the importance of teacher development, the necessity for cultural engagement and the research questions. Chapter II I look at literature to support is a Literature Review which discusses the current state of STEM in the U.S., the origins of hip-hop culture, and how the arts can improve/ has improved the education system. Chapter II also incorporated the conceptual framework and theoretical framework of this dissertation. Chapter III is the Methodology which contains a
19 summary of the data collected and lays out how focus groups were used in the study, as well as the valid of the study, Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval and how the data was analyzed.
Chapter IV is a study entitled The Use of Battle Rap to Explore New Ways of Engaging Students in STEM and School. This study was conducted in the Spring of 2018 and consisted of focus group interviews which were transcribed and analyzed for major themes. This study is important because battle rap techniques have never been extracted and used to explore their use within a
STEM classroom. Chapter V is a study entitled Engaging Undergraduate Science Students
Through Hip-Hop: Battle Rap and/as Revolutionary Science Instruction. This study was conducted from Fall 2018 through Spring 2019 and consisted of interviews and reflections which were also analyzed for major themes. This study sheds light on how battle rap can help students form bonds with each other, peer teach and the necessity for students to have an opportunity to combine their thought process with what the material they learn in STEM. Chapter VI analyzes the conclusion of both studies, discusses the future intentions of my research, the limitations of this study, and critiques of hip-hop.
My employment of a manuscript style dissertation reflects the need to be innovative in not just the study, but how the information in the study is being disseminated. A manuscript style dissertation consists of two or more manuscripts or articles that will be submitted for peer reviewed publication. This approach allows the researcher to write the larger document in a way that allows for aspects of the research to be shared in different settings and for different audiences in efforts to use the research to inform different audiences in the field of STEM education.
20 Chapter II
LITERATURE REVIEW
Chapter 1 discussed the importance of improving postsecondary education within STEM, and the possibilities of engaging students by introducing aspects of battle rap to learning.
Through scholarly literature and research, this chapter explores the current state of STEM; the history and evolution of hip-hop; how music and music education has been used in learning institutions throughout history; and how music, specifically hip-hop, can improve STEM today.
Using established programs in competitive speech and music to enhance learning, I discuss how incorporating battle rap into STEM is the combination and evolution of programs that have already been successful in retaining and engaging students in the education space.
The Current State of STEM Education in the United States
The United States won the most gold medals in the summer Olympics of 2016 (Estaban
& Gamio, 2016). This American accomplishment demonstrated that the nation could compete and succeed globally in sports. However, the same cannot be said for academics. The United
States ranked 34th in overall education, according to the National Science Foundation (NSF,
2012). In STEM, the United States placed an unimpressive 38th out of 71 countries in math and
24th in science (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development [OECD], 2016). I assert that one of the major issues around the poor educational attainment of wide swaths of our population is the absence of engagement. Researchers have suggested that engagement is a fundamental component of teaching (Klassen, Perry, & Frenzel, 2019). If teachers do not know how to engage students from different cultures, then students will have difficulty retaining the
21 content they need to learn. Consequently, if students are not retaining information, they will have difficulty actively participating in STEM (Skinner & Belmont, 1993). In addition to the absence of engagement in STEM classrooms, the culture of STEM invokes a competitive and grade- driven approach to teaching and learning (Flanders, 2019). Because of issues around engagement and hyper-competitive/individual-focused instruction, there is no impetus for certain students to engage in the disciplines (Flanders, 2019). In particular, young people of color from urban settings—whose modes of engagement outside of school require emotional investment, active engagement, and collective success—find themselves misaligned with the culture of STEM
(Klassen et al., 2019). Students must engage in competition but also understand that they are not in competition with one another; rather, they are in competition with the world. They exist in a world where anyone from overseas can apply for jobs and remotely dial into work. Employers no longer require on-the-job training; they can simply hire individuals from other continents who know exactly what to do (Deutsch, 2015). The requirement for participation in STEM in the new economy is an engaged, informed, and knowledgeable individual who understands the nature of competition and has a personal drive for making sense of STEM and its application to any task at hand (Tytler, Osborne, Williams, Tytler, & Clark, 2008).
Occupations in STEM increased 10.5% from 2009 to 2015 (U.S. Bureau of Labor
Statistics [BLS], 2017). To prepare students to compete in the 21st century for these jobs, educators have placed a specific emphasis on STEM. The push for STEM originated shortly after the 1957 launch of Sputnik, the Russian space satellite. The United States felt it could not compete with the rest of the world in the fields of technology and innovation; in response,
Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy took action. President Eisenhower
22 started the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in 1958, while President
Kennedy continued his predecessor’s efforts by declaring in 1961 that before the decade would end, the first Americans would land on the moon—as they did in 1969 (Kennedy, 1961). In
STEM education, the same urgency is necessary. Urban youth of color who are projected to be the numerical majority by 2050 must be engaged in STEM. To do this work appropriately, educators must reimagine teaching and learning to include new and provocative approaches to instruction that are embedded in culture.
In response to the Sputnik era, a number of national science and technology initiatives were put in place. New ideas that had not been considered possible were coming to life. For example, as a result of the investment in creativity and imagination in STEM, surgery patient
Barney Clark received the first-ever artificial heart (Barnard & Med, 1967) in South Africa. This era also ushered in the first personal computer (Kay, 1977). The first personal computer was designed in 1974 (Rojas, 2001) and continues to benefit students in today’s K-12 classrooms. In
2001, the NSF adjusted what it had originally called SMET to STEM, to make it more phonetically palatable. While many may consider the reordering of these letters as arbitrary, I suggest that it serves as a powerful metaphor. If the innovations in the post-Sputnik era led us to improve SMET, innovations in the new 21st-century era must also become more palatable. Not only is STEM easier to pronounce, but it reflects a mindset of innovation that connects with its audience. A summarized definition of STEM from Tsupros, Kohler, and Hallinen (2009) is as follows:
STEM is considered an interdisciplinary approach to learning where rigorous academic
concepts are coupled with real-world lessons as students apply science, technology,
23 engineering, and mathematics in contexts that make connections between school,
community, work, and the global enterprise enabling the development of STEM literacy
and with it the ability to compete in the new economy. (p. 5)
In the 2005 report Rising Above the Gathering Storm (Committee on Prospering in the
Global Economy of the 21st Century, 2007), the United States was identified as doing a poor job of educating students in key STEM areas, compared to other countries. The report, formulated by the U.S. National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, shared that if the United
States stayed on this path, it would begin to decline in the global economy due to an unprepared workforce. Although written nearly two decades ago, the report continues to resonate for me. My life’s work is specifically focused on engaging segments of the population who have been traditionally identified as part of the unprepared workforce.
An important lesson that educators usually learn on the job is that throwing money at education without successful measurable outcomes does not work (Pena, 2012). Specifically related to STEM, we must do a better job of assessing the current state and deficiencies of
STEM, and then move toward a better STEM-focused initiative that captures the robustness of the disciplines and the grand philosophy for teaching and learning science and mathematics. As a response to this need, high school teachers, college teachers, physical science researchers, engineers, and state politicians assembled to create the Next Generation Science Standards
(NGSS) from 2010 to 2013. These standards were intended to prepare students for college and career readiness in public schools (NGSS, 2013). One of the goals of the NGSS document was to support curriculum that would support the application of knowledge in each of the STEM
24 disciplines while developing a shared philosophy among them. The NGSS intended to provide a deeper understanding of core ideas and build a bridge across crosscutting concepts in each of the disciplines (Pruitt, 2014). Integrating content with practice is crucial to a student’s ability to think critically (Carey, 1985; Corcoran, Mosher, & Rogat, 2009; Duschl, 2008; Hofstein & Lunetta,
2004; Kuhn, 1993). The NGSS provided a document that supports instruction in STEM to develop critical thinking.
Bringing individuals from different disciplines together to create such a widely accepted document was an impressive feat. Today, a number of secondary public schools across the country use the NGSS (NGSS Lead States, 2013). It has, in a sense, united a science teaching workforce by providing a common core of ideas, and providing teaching guidelines and routes to solve problems across disciplines. Despite these efforts, significant issues still remain with engaging certain students to participate fully in the educational process. The monolithic nature of uniform standards is that they do not allow or consider different types of students. Education should never be guided by a “one-size-fits-all” paradigm that does not embrace the individuality of students and the varied ways they may arrive at answers or develop relationships to subjects.
While many researchers agree that every student’s journey to an answer must be celebrated
(Clark, 2001), many researchers are also unaware of the unique approaches that certain students may need to take on this journey. Penuel and Reiser (2018) suggested that the NGSS could provide more support for meaningful science learning among students from different cultural communities and linguistic backgrounds. I suggest that meaningfulness varies based on each student’s cultural traditions and practices (Ladson-Billings, 1995a). Furthermore, even a
25 consideration of cultural and linguistic background may fall short without a clear understanding of shared cultural expressions among marginalized youth.
A powerful assessment of the movement to engage youth in STEM was conducted by the
Appalachia Initiatives Investment and administered by the Rand Corporation in 2017. They found that the main problem with STEM education was that educators were unsure of the applications of STEM to the real world. Instruction that focuses on scientific and technological literacy may also be absent of in-depth knowledge on STEM careers and, as a consequence, teachers may lack the knowledge to prepare students for careers in those fields (Culbertson,
Gonzalez, & Nanda, 2017). I suggest that even with the lack of teacher knowledge about STEM careers, an educator who makes connections with young people and engages in approaches to pedagogy that connect with culture will motivate young people to explore careers in STEM. The current state of STEM may need a superhero to save the day—a hero who does not need a gun to move a crowd, a hero so powerful who can make someone feel without a physical touch. In this case, the hero is music.
History of Music in Education
Music has been included in schools since the establishment of the earliest educational venues. “For thousands of years, knowledge was imparted from generation to generation through the medium of singing and chanting” (Armstrong, 2000, p. 59). This communication was typically done by the griots or storytellers. Eventually, institutions/organizations recognizing the importance of music created music courses for the learning of instruments and singing. Schools also began to incorporate music to help the recall of information since access to written text was
26 limited. For example, Takshashila University, established in 700 BCE in northwest India, had a music course, along with subjects such as science, astronomy, math, archery, and agriculture
(Brahmaviharidas, 2010). The original schools established by Pythagoras in 529 BCE (O’Connor
& Robertson, 1999), Plato in 387 BCE (Norfleet, 2010), and Aristotle’s Lyceum in 335 BC also created space for the study of music within the curriculum (Dirks, 1996). The presence of music in these first recorded educational programs demonstrated that it has always been considered an important part of learning across all cultures.
In the 9th century, Charlemagne of Europe also made music a part of the core curriculum.
European universities in the 11th century followed his model and music became a staple for learning in the culture (Kries, 2000). Song schools began to spring up in the Middle Ages to teach reading, grammar, and math since textbooks were rare (Watson, 1908).
In 1875, Colonel Francis W. Parker of Massachusetts introduced a new classroom structure that encouraged the use of songs for learning based on their connection to the subjects being studied (Parker, Cooke, & Stilwell, 1901). His changes caused increased enthusiasm toward learning and improvements in student assessment (Edwards, 1935). Later, in 1882,
Colonel Parker began incorporating the idea of child-centered learning into classrooms (Wilson,
Gary, & Greene, 1988). This concept gave rise to schools that encouraged children to craft their own songs based on their daily activities (Shiraishi, 1995).
The invention of the radio in 1895 (History, 2009) provided a new use for music in the curriculum. Students learned penmanship via rhythmic music, and geography lessons were delivered using music to signal the beginning and ending of each lesson (Penmanship, 1925).
The use of technology in education eventually allowed for the creation of folk songs to become
27 used for academic content. One of the first folk songs was created in 1911; however, the 1950s was when folk music began to be used in the academic curriculum. One Massachusetts teacher,
Mr. Bonyun, used music to teach history, which engaged children immensely. He went on to record an album and create a curriculum that correlated songs the children already liked, with academic content from his classroom (Gustafson, 1958).
The advent of television allowed more innovative ways to utilize songs for learning.
Sesame Street, which premiered in 1969, was the epitome of success when it came to harnessing television and music specifically for learning by focusing on the development of cognitive and literacy skills for preschoolers. Research during the development of the show found that segments incorporating lively music were considered the most appealing to children (Anderson
& Levin, 1976, p. 811). Schoolhouse Rock! pushed the envelope even further in 1973 as it not only incorporated music to help educate youth, but also added cartoons. It used catchy melodies to teach concepts related to science, math, social studies, and grammar (Calvert & Tart, 1993).
In the 1970s, states including Ohio, New York, California, and Illinois began implementing music-integrated curricula in their classrooms. Whether students were singing about history, analyzing songs, or writing their own compositions, new ways to use music as part of the curriculum were being implemented all over the country (Music Education, 1974). The history of music in the curriculum provides evidence that music has been historically a useful tool to enrich the curriculum in all subject areas. Music, specifically hip-hop music, can be used as a pedagogical approach to learning and relaying information about STEM (Emdin, 2015).
28 History of Hip-hop
For most people, hip-hop is only one genre of music, but its history shows that it is more than just a musical style. Music and musical style were the only forms of language that were transportable for enslaved Africans coming to the new world (Gilroy, 1993). The inaccessibility to traditional Western forms of literacy gave Black music disproportionate importance as it replaced written and spoken language. The mobility of music and its ability to trespass social and linguistic lines lent hip-hop its necessary rootedness in intertextuality. Hip-hop has grown into a culture, a lifestyle, fashion, and a way of life for many people. Numerous artists continue to express their excitement for hip-hop by exploring the rich and innovative culture associated with it.
The culture of hip-hop originated in the 1970s as an underground movement in the
Bronx, New York, most notably at a birthday party by a man known as Clive Campbell, also known as DJ Kool Herc (Chang, 2005). Campbell was originally from Jamaica. He moved to the
Bronx at a young age and became known for spinning records in the community. He had a technique of locating a break in songs where the vocals and the instruments would drop. The breakbeat became his signature move and was known as the “merry-go-round.” Today it is known as a “breakbeat” and is used by DJs throughout the world. DJ Kool Herc, the father of hip-hop, was DJ’ing at a party to bring the community back together. Through observations,
DJ Kool Herc began to understand what part of the music was preferred by the audience—the
“breakbeat”—and during that break, he and other DJs could show off their talents.
During the summer of 1973, DJ Kool Herc performed for a large crowd, and his breakbeat technique became a grassroots musical revolution, giving birth to what we know as
29 hip-hop. Hip-hop quickly became a social and therapeutic outlet for both Black and Brown youth to combat the lack of economic opportunity in the Bronx. Hip-hop became the way to speak truth to power. During the developmental era of hip-hop, the Bronx was one of the poorest cities in the
United States. In 1960, the Bronx began to deteriorate due to increased crime, struggling economy, and budget cuts to police and fire departments. Another big blow to the city was the loss of a construction project that was to transform the Bronx into a suburb and make traveling easier. As the crime rate increased, many people lost their homes and had to relocate (Gonzalez,
2004).
The Cross Bronx Expressway was proposed to build the economy. Robert Moses, who headed up the project, was determined to build the bridge along the route that would displace more than double the number of families planned because the alternate route was not in the best interest of his political colleagues. The community protested the building of the Expressway because they could not afford to relocate and pay higher rents; however, the Expressway was built, despite community protest. It has been suggested that the Expressway led to the downfall of the Bronx (Caro, 1974). Despite all the struggles, the city came together as a community to share their economic hardship through music, and the hip-hop culture was born (Emdin, 2015).
Battle Rap
Battle rap is a style of rapping that emerged during the formation of hip-hop. The battle rap technique was used as a way for rappers to display their prowess competitively to a live audience on the microphone. Battle rap consists of two rappers verbalizing their rap lyrics and trying to out-duel each other. The elements on display are “one’s linguistic and witty ability”
30 which is represented by what is being said. Overall presentation and performance in the battle are also put on display.
Rap battling is an African American storytelling and (communal) competition tradition that arose from the integral African tradition of storytelling. Storytellers were held to high standards; to be outstanding, storytellers used creative language, accompanied by music, audience involvement, and overall presentation styles, to keep the interest of the community
(Utley, 2009). Rose (1994) explained battle rap as “tales told in elaborate and ever-changing
Black [sic] slang and refer to Black cultural figures and rituals, mainstream film video and television characters, and little-known Black heroes” (p. 3). The style of battle rapping is often portrayed in African storytelling through the use of irony and humor. Hip-hop and battle rap mirror the traditions of the griot African culture of storytelling.
In western Africa, the griot are particularly known for their storytelling traditions and using stories to preserve their history (Bebey, 1969). The stories told by griot culture often portray Africans as genealogists, historians, spokespeople, ambassadors, musicians, teachers, warriors, interpreters, praise singers, advisors, and the like. Africans were robbed of their culture and their roles were downgraded to only having comedians, preachers, singers, and rappers as part of the African American experience. Although African Americans are considered a minority,
African Americans are clearly influential. Whether through the endeavors of Barack Obama,
Martin Luther King Jr., and Muhammad Ali, or through music, dance, visual arts, and science, this minority born from slavery has contributed unforgettable legacies to the development of the
United States and the world.
31 While hip-hop originated in the ghettos of New York as a way of identity formation and social status in communities that were eventually demolished, it continues to have a positive influence on global society. Indeed, hip-hop itself is a global culture influencing every continent.
The birth of hip-hop introduced various styles of entertainment for the American culture: territorial battles, rappers, graffiti artists, break dancers, and DJ battles. With the birth of hip-hop, pioneers such as Afrika Bambaataa of Zulu Nation and Kool Herc started to emerge through DJ battling while representing their neighborhood.
Afrika Bambaataa wanted a culture of Black unity grounded on African symbols and figureheads (Broughton, 1998). He won a UNICEF contest and went to Africa, his travel experience there influenced how he helped shape hip-hop. Afrika Bambaataa explained that his experiences in Africa were “a big inspiration (on the Zulu Nation), seeing black people controlling their own destiny, seeing them get up and go to their own work” (paragraph 29 ) This was unusual since African Americans are minorities in the United States and have little say in what occurs in most aspects of their lives because much of it is controlled by White supremacy.
The pillar of battle rap was first discovered in a vintage verbal play known as “the dozens.” The dozens is a game in which someone talks about another person’s mother, family, or appearance in a humorous way with and can involve sexual innuendos (Foster, 1986, p. 215).
According to Lewis (1994), the origin of the dozens dates back to the days of slavery before
1865. Slaves who worked in the field used the game instead of physical assault on higher-status house slaves. Slaves who worked in field would be whipped or starved if they harmed house servants, who were typically light-skinned because they had a white parent. Slaves who worked in the field would vent, insulting the house servants' parents. If the insults worked, the
32 denunciation became more disrespectful. The name "dozens" may have come from the idea that the opponent's mother could be one of the dozens of women who had to be available to satisfy her masters sexual wishes. The ability to orally attack someone in a humorous way, as opposed to physically attacking someone, was a skill many that kept some black people alive. In turn, being able to take a verbal assault, could help keep one alive as well. These are some of the features of survival that many black people had to learn.
Today, close African American friends play this game and joke around. Another game that helped start battle rap was “signifyin,” which consists of “speakers denigrating another speaker through witty play on words and irony” (Mavima, 2015, p. 90). The first live battle rap performance was in 1981 by rapper Busy Bee Starski and Kool Moe Dee (QD3, 2003). The battle was focused on who could rock the crowd the most based on the beat. The MCs performed onstage, and the winners were decided based on how loud the crowd applauded. Each performance consisted of several factors such as braggadocio, crowd rapport, representing the neighborhood, and so on. With the progression of time, battle rap became personal, and soon rappers would battle through rap to defend their neighborhood. Battle rap became popular as hip- hop continued to emerge. The battle of 1994 between Craig G and Supernatural added a new spin to battle rap. Supernatural called out Craig G during his performance while Craig G was in the audience. The host invited Craig G on stage and the two battled each other. Craig G was the winner of the battle. The battle between Craig G and Supernatural set the stage for shows and festivals that focused on battles. It also established a “place in battle rap as one of the earliest and most exciting sagas in the subculture” (Fitzgerald, 2000, p. time 28:54).
33 Battle Rap has since grown into a huge enterprise with several groups hosting different global events (Garland, 2012), such as King of the Dot, which is based in Canada; Ultimate Rap
League, based in the United States; and Don’t Flop, based in the United Kingdom. Each event allows artists from across the globe to participate in their matches and lets audiences decide who is the best. The artists who participate through their consistency on these platforms create a massive following which spectators watch. They typically discuss guns, drugs, and violence in a humorous yet serious manner that keeps the fans yearning for more. Christopher Emdin spoke with a battle rapper by the name of Loaded Lux at Teachers College, Columbia University
(2020) and one of the topics that came up in the interview was how he keeps fans yearning for more.
Loaded Lux shared that he believes in order to reach people, an individual must “find a happy medium. It’s all about how you stay on the ground, with your head in the clouds. So I try to find components that people can resonate with, use variables people can see and do know. So the fact that you do realize this, let me put in this quote, here.” (15moferadio, 2020). According to Loaded Lux, discussing topics in ways that will resonate with individuals is key to keeping them engaged and having a common understanding with them. If teachers were to make sure they spoke in their lectures with this form of communication, they would attempt to ensure each lecture resonated with the students in some way, shape, or form. I believe this form of teaching would allow us to retain more students within the STEM disciplines, especially if actually involving music.
34 Science Content-based Music
There is an entire genre of science content-based music, rich in the subject matter and available for teaching science concepts, that educators have largely ignored. Of all genres of music that can be named and identified, a formal definition for science-content music is still needed. One of the oldest science-based songs of our time is Tom Lehrer’s “The Elements,” which was recorded in 1959. This song lists the elements of the periodic table that were known at that time. Educators can use “The Elements” song in Math, Biology, Chemistry, Physics and even Engineering classes. It is one of numerous songs that incorporate science-content music as a learning strategy for grades. Many web-based resources are available to K-12 science teachers, including from the Science Songwriters Association (Crowther, 2006), which lists over 30 diverse artists covering all aspects of science education. Songwriters who are a part of this group create music or adjust popular melodies specifically with science content-related lyrics for use in teaching science classes. Another resource available to educators is the Math and Science Song
Information Viewable Everywhere (MASSIVE) archive, which houses about 2,500 science- related songs online searchable by artists, titles, and keywords (Crowther, 2006). The site was created so science educators can use this tool to access music that may be relevant to their lesson with a few taps of their fingers. YouTube videos can also be used to teach science. ParrMr.
(2011) posted a song describing the phases of the moon using pictures which to date has garnered over two million views.
Although these websites or YouTube videos are a step in the right direction, they have not been updated. Without recent material, the subtle nuances and relevance of the times needed to maintain the attention of both science educators and students is lacking. The websites are not
35 very easy to navigate and are outdated. If these types of channels of knowledge were funded by a national organization like the National Science Foundation, perhaps they would have more oversight, be easier to use, and contain songs that are consistently relevant with the times. The benefits of music on STEM, and on learning, should not be overlooked (Crowther, 2012).
Benefits of Music
Scientific research itself has shown how the nature of music impacts and supports memory and retention of content learned in a classroom. Specifically, within music, lyrics and melodies are chunked together into patterns of rhythm and verse to enable longer passages to be retained in memory. The combination of melody and lyrics provides multiple neural pathways to store, access, and retrieve memories. When two events are linked together in memory, the recall of one event prompts the recall of the other (Sousa, 2006). Caine and Caine (2001) suggested that new breakthroughs about knowledge on brain-based learning theory are pertinent mechanisms for understanding how children gather information and should be the foundation of teaching strategies implemented in the classroom. Incorporating content-rich songs should be listed as one of many “complex activities and ongoing experiences in which the curriculum is embedded” (p. 19). Today, there is little enthusiasm for students to enter into the STEM space
(Perna et al., 2009); incorporating music into the STEM field may be the tool needed to make students feel as though STEM is for them.
Lerman (2001) depicted an educational program created by Columbia College in Chicago that utilizes an art-enriched way to deal with learning science for students of all grade levels.
This program has utilized arts, music, dance, and sports to enable students to investigate,
36 participate in, and communicate their knowledge of science through the arts since the 1980s.
Research specifically on this program has demonstrated that student accomplishment in science improves and students are more enthusiastic about science because of participating in this.
Lerman discussed the advantages of this art-enriched science educational plan: “students retain their knowledge of science many years after they graduate and attribute this accomplishment to the fact that they used art, music, dance and drama to internalize the learning process” (p. 5).
Given the research, albeit limited, on the impact of music in learning science, it would seem imperative to incorporate more of it into the classroom environment for students of all grade levels and backgrounds.
Rhythm
Synchronized coordination of movement to music has been observed in all known cultures (Brown, 2003). We move our bodies to the rhythms of music by tapping, drumming, plucking, singing, dancing, or rocking an infant (Wallin, Merker, & Brown, 2000). As described by Juntunen and Hyvönen (2004), a dynamic partnership exists in which listening inspires movement while moving guides and informs listening. In a typical classroom, students are strongly encouraged to remain quiet and sit still (Powell, 2013), unable to incorporate rhythm or forms of melodic learning while trying to recall, retain, and encode information.
Brain Anatomy and Functionality
Being able to recall, store, and encode information is significant for human development and requires different structures within the brain. The human brain is composed of various
37 sections that have unique functions and interconnect neurologically to assist daily activities and even memory. One important area for processing memory is the limbic system, which is composed of the thalamus, hypothalamus, hippocampus, and amygdala. The thalamus initially processes sensory input signals and sends them to other parts of the brain and is also involved with connecting emotion and cognition. The hypothalamus manages hormone release. The hippocampus is essential for converting content from working memory to long-term memory.
When memories are enmeshed with emotions, the amygdala becomes activated and encodes long-term memory into an archive (Sousa, 2006).
The cerebrum and cerebellum are the most evolved structures in the human brain. The cerebellum, located below the cerebrum and behind the brainstem, has deep folds to increase its surface area. Senses, thoughts, and emotions are connected here to assist with the cognitive process. The cerebrum itself makes up 80% of the human brain and is divided into four lobes that serve varying roles in cognition (Sousa, 2006). The cerebellum and cerebrum are divided into two hemispheres, left and right. The left hemisphere is involved in analytical and speech processes, while the right hemisphere handles patterns in music and spatial orientation.
Differentiating between the left and right hemispheres should not be oversimplified, according to
Jensen (2008), since variations in how the brain works differ according to gender, occupation, and hand dominance. Thus, theories based solely on left-right distinctions should be considered irrelevant.
38 Memory and Mnemonics
Three forms of memory are involved in processing stimuli. Sensory input is first scanned for relevance in the thalamus. As a sensory stimulus enters the brain, neurons react to guide the incoming information to the ideal processing area where it is kept in short-term memory for up to
30 seconds. Information received is organized with content-evoking emotional responses given the highest priority. In his 2006 article, Sousa shared, “emotions consistently affect attention and learning” (p. 44) and fortify the neural system that encodes emotionally based memories. In view of the physiological reaction that the brain has when emotions are included, learning and emotions are interwoven. Emotions are chemical responses to stimuli and, when enacted, guarantee that students will be able to recall material related to a subject. Once emotions are bound to sensory data, the neural network becomes enhanced. Comedy, stories, and music are great tools for activating an emotional response, garnering attention, and encoding several neural bonds (Sousa, 2006). The more routes are created, the stronger the memory will be. Any process that incorporates multiple memory pathways will result in improved learning. Material embedded in songs and music is able to activate multiple neural connections (Jensen, 2008).
Working memory is deciphered in the frontal lobes and holds small amounts of transient information for conscious processing. In music, rhymes and tunes are lumped together into rhythmic verses to ensure that lengthier passages be retained in memory. While processing sensory stimuli, the longer the information is stored in working memory, the more likely it will be found useful and be incorporated into long-term memory. As the unique neural networks shift the information into long-term memory, they are sorted based on relevance and past experience.
From a biological perspective, neurons are created when a continuous number of neurons
39 repeatedly fire in a succinct pattern. If the neural associations are actuated together regularly, the likelihood of the memory being retained and recalled is high. The greater the number of bonds made and associated with a memory, the more likely it is to be stored in numerous neural systems, which gives rise to various methods of retrieval.
Retrieval of information that has been incorporated into one’s memory occurs when quiescent neurons are activated. The more connections are created, the more opportunities arise to access memory. In music, melody and lyrics work succinctly to cue each other for memory retrieval (Sousa, 2006). Jensen (2005) summarized the benefits of educators tapping into this memory retrieval process and using music in a curriculum, based on current understanding of how the brain operates. Its social nature, emotional appeal, ability to carry a message, accessibility, and relevance are all listed. In citing ways to implement a music-rich curriculum,
Jensen encouraged the use of songs and melodies to introduce content, build community, enhance learning, assist in memory, and convey information.
Music’s ability for involuntary recollection means that there is potential for science- content songs to replay subconsciously in a student’s mind. Tunes that are played often and are relatively simple to grasp but contain unexpected elements can become
“earworms"(Cunningham, Downie, & Bainbridge, 2005). Referring to this as a form of Musical
Imagery Repetition (MIR), Bennett (2002) described this scenario as “previously heard music that, while consciously unintended, repeats uncontrollably and pervasively in thought” (p. 2).
These melodic echoes are typically small segments of a song that can fit inside one’s working memory, about 15 to 30 seconds in duration (Levetin, 2006). “Earworms” can influence
40 voluntary or involuntary memory activation and be recalled up to 60 years after the melody was last heard (Liikkanen, 2008).
Bennett (2002) suggested melodies can become earworms by the “Rule of Nine” hypothesis; a song must be of average complexity, with the chorus repeated three times and the song heard three or more times. If science-content music were to become embedded in someone’s thoughts throughout the day, it would become a mnemonic device to facilitate learning (Farnsworth, 1981). Belleza (1981) defined mnemonic devices as “learning strategies, which can often enhance the learning and later recall of information” (p. 247). According to
Hodges (1982), songs and rhymes are “ready-made mnemonics” (p. 27), a point which gives rise to the idea that they can be used in content areas to simplify recall of information.
STEM and STEAM
STEAM is a movement within STEM education that emphasizes the need for a relationship between STEM and the arts. Within the arts are various branches of creative activity, such as painting, music, literature, and dance (Lexico, n.d.). According to Ryan (2015), “STEAM removes limitations and replaces them with wonder, critique, inquiry, and innovation” (p. 48).
“Successful learning in the 21st century depends upon horizontal connectedness across areas of knowledge and subjects as well as to the community and the wider world” (p. 21). The arts provide the glue that connects the STEM disciplines to each other.
Albert Einstein was a world-renown physicist and the father of the theory of relativity. He was also a musician, a violinist, and a concert pianist. According to Isaacson (2007), Einstein is quoted as saying, “A society’s competitive advantage will come not from how well its schools
41 teach the multiplication and periodic tables, but from how well they stimulate imagination and creativity” (p. 7). Leonardo DaVinci, a Renaissance artist most known for the painting “Mona
Lisa,” was also a mathematician, an inventor, and a scientist. He used the golden ratio (1:0.618) when constructing the “Mona Lisa” because that is said to be aesthetically pleasing. In modern times, Steve Jobs named his company Apple because “It is in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough, its technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the results that make our heart sing” (Matyszcyk, 2011, para. 4). Each of these individuals saw the necessity of incorporating the arts into STEM as an integral component of teaching and learning. The goal is to foster the type of thinking that allows students the ability to create and make connections. The arts make room for endless possibilities; as new music can be created with the change of a chord and new pictures with the stroke of a paintbrush, new ways of learning can be introduced as artistic expression is welcomed in the classroom. Despite the possibilities that lie within the movement from STEM to STEAM, however, critiques of this movement still exist.
Maria Xanthoudaki (2017) took issue with the fact that in some spaces, the arts are only acknowledged as an attempt to encourage people to join STEM. Xanthoudaki felt this ideology can hurt the arts at the expense of pushing STEM to the masses. I am uncertain if Xanthoudaki is aware of this, but a candle loses nothing by lighting another candle from it; in relation to the arts, if the arts are the magic lighter that draws students’ essential interest in STEM, I believe we should embrace this bond with open arms. To Xanthoudaki’s point, though, teaching within the
STEM space does need to improve. She feels STEM is not the issue, but rather old approaches to
STEM and our prejudices about what science or scientists do in real life cause the problem.
42 The STEM curriculum and comprehensive practices have historically benefited middle- class White students, thereby failing to provide quality instruction for students who have been traditionally marginalized because of their culturally diverse backgrounds—largely urban students (Melnick & Zeichner, 1998; Tyack & Cuban, 1995). The science and mathematics achievement of minority students is decreasing (National Assessment of Educational Progress
[NAEP], 2013). According to Munce and Fraser (2012), African American students’ interest in
STEM has decreased significantly over time and is now lower than that of any other ethnic group.
Studies have shown that by the year 2050, the minority population in the United States will be 62%, meaning the United States will be over 50% minority (U.S. Census Bureau News,
2010). It is time the approach to the curriculum began to match the population. However, the fact is that over 80% of the teachers entering urban schools will be White, middle-class, and inexperienced (Ladson-Billings, 2001). Teachers have challenges in connecting with their culturally diverse students which, consequently, leads to students disregarding their teachers’ authority by enacting exchanges that hinder science teaching and learning (Tobin, 2000). Urban students are less likely to be interested in the sciences partially because educators misunderstand the realities and experiences of urban students and, as a result, they are not able to demonstrate the relevance of science in the lives of these students (Kahle, Meece, & Scantlebury, 2000;
Seiler, 2001).
This cycle could be altered if teachers began to enact culturally relevant pedagogy as pedagogical excellence in urban settings. In Ladson-Billings’ (1995a) studies of an effective way to educate African American populations, the main criteria are: “(a) Students must experience
43 academic success; (b) students must develop and/or maintain cultural competence, and (c) students must develop a critical consciousness through which they challenge the status quo of the current social order” (p. 160). Essentially, culturally relevant pedagogy is a practice that encourages educators to connect students’ home and school lives while still meeting the expectations of the curriculum. Some people say culturally relevant teaching “Is Just Good
Teaching”; the main issue is that this form of instruction has not been provided at institutions where most of the students are minorities (Ladson-Billings, 1995b). Culturally relevant teaching is a great tool for learning. Another great tool is Reality Pedagogy. Reality Pedagogy, coined by
Emdin (2016), employs what he called the 7 Cs, which expound upon the work of Tobin (2000).
Reality pedagogy includes tools such as co-teaching, co-generative dialogues, cosmopolitanism, content, competition, curation, and context (Emdin, 2016). This pedagogical approach addresses the issue of students’ belief that school science contradicts their everyday lives but supports teachers in science teaching.
Engaging urban youth of color in a STEM field is by no means an easy task. First of all, most of the individuals in their families and community are not in the STEM field (Frehill,
DiFabio, & Hill, 2008). Second, those who teach in the field and write about it do not look like their students (Coleman, 2006). Lastly, the resources necessary to succeed in STEM are not always invested in these students’ communities. Fortunately, Emdin (2013) created a formula in a program that gives students an opportunity to express their frustrations about their situation, but also allows them to learn about STEM topics. This program is called Science Genius.
Science Genius incorporates education with hip-hop and has succeeded in engaging students of color in STEM. Its roots are based in Reality Pedagogy because it uses the real-life
44 experiences and emotions of the individuals being instructed as a baseline for communication and instruction (Adjapong & Emdin, 2015; Emdin, 2011). Since urban youth of color are drawn to hip-hop, using Reality Pedagogy as a way for them to express themselves in that form is logical. According to Emdin (Emdin, Adjapong, & Levy, 2016), students who participated in the
Science Genius program mentioned they were more interested in the STEM field, implying that taking such an innovative approach is working.
Schools that have participated in Science Genius have a history of underperformance in the sciences, with the majority of the student body composed of Black and Latino students with low socioeconomic status; moreover, the schools have difficulty engaging students in STEM.
Each school had at least one science educator committed to fostering science-themed hip-hop content among the students at least one period a week. The teacher of the science class was given a guide on the best ways to implement this program, allowing students to combine STEM education with hip-hop music. The best group or individual from each school is selected by peers and competes in the final round against other schools in New York City in a sort of hip-hop cypher.
Hip-hop is a cornerstone in the life of today’s youth because they have grown up with it.
For some, hip-hop was the best friend they never had, who taught them lessons to survive in the street that no book could ever teach (Emdin, 2013). Working as a sort of mirror for their lives, the decision to incorporate hip-hop into learning was very perceptive.
With the nature of many courses being difficult to focus on due to their complexity, it is important for teachers to recognize the challenges that each child may be facing. That first takes understanding the child’s culture and learning issues and how the material may resonate with
45 them. If kids were able to observe people in the STEM fields who looked like them, maybe they could see STEM as a future career (Ladson-Billings, 2000). Pictures rarely portray minorities as scientists, and movies and cartoons seldom portray them in STEM fields (Basile & Lopez, 2015).
So, when can children imagine themselves in a field where they have rarely seen someone who looks like them, both in person and on television? The media typically only portrays entertainers and athletes who look like them (Summers & Morgan, 2008).
Science Genius
Science Genius gives kids an opportunity to correlate their experiences in life with STEM knowledge, which is harder than it sounds. It has often been thought that if one cannot explain something, one does not really know it, and it would take a deep understanding of a STEM topic to make rhymes about it. Kids who are involved in the Science Genius program get to learn something about themselves, as much as they get to learn about STEM material (Leland, 2013).
In fact, during a conversation, Dr. Emdin mentioned that students who participated in Science
Genius B.A.T.T.L.E.S. outperformed their non-participating peers on science tests (Christopher
Emdin, personal communication, November 20, 2017).
Science Genius is successful because Emdin has been willing to adjust the program as the students see fit. He keeps them engaged by incorporating different celebrities into the program each year. Studies have suggested that celebrities can influence desired behaviors in youth (Bush,
2004). Emdin started Science Genius with Gza of Wu Tang Clan (Leland, 2012), and since that time has brought in celebrities like Derek Luke, Rah Digga, and many more. Students have an opportunity to take pictures with the celebrities and have their performance judged by them. The
46 best performance receives a prize like headphones and an opportunity to be featured in The New
York Times, News 12, ABC, and other media outlets.
Jabari Johnson, who was a senior at Urban Assembly School for the Performing Arts
High school, won the 2013 Science Genius competition held at Teachers College. A video posted to YouTube by Teachers College, Columbia University in 2013 has 75,000 views and is often used in science education classes showed him commanding the stage and rapping about joules, kinetic energy, and other Physics terms. One rhyme he shared was:
I feed my interest with the laws of physics,
When m and v multiply the picture is painted vivid,
The work was just something that got me inside the door
Now we, squaring the v and it’s exponentially more
For his performance, Johnson won a pair of speakers, all the pizza he wanted at GZA's favorite pizza place, a behind-the-scenes tour of the American Museum of Natural History, and a day in the recording studio with GZA of Wu Tang Clan. According to the Daily News in 2013, Johnson felt: “When you explain science in hip-hop, I can understand better than if it was explained in any other language. They’re very similar, science and hip-hop.” He and the other students had an amazing time performing and competing against one another.
Competition can bring out the best in individuals, especially in an academic setting
(Darrell, 2010). Competing in Science Genius forces individuals to figure out how to make complex information easy to understand and ultimately sound good in the process. The kids have an opportunity to perform in front of other schools, friends, and family to show the world what
47 they have to offer. Performing these songs gives the students a sense of group belonging
(Kokotsaki & Hallam, 2007), which they may have been missing at their school (Dei, 1997).
Emdin understood the importance of expressing oneself in his own life and in Science
Genius; as a kid from the Bronx, he used his own cultural relevance within his pedagogy. If we think of the early Americas, Native Americans typically had a campfire or other rituals as people jumped and danced around a campfire. Centuries later, we saw the Soul Train line. Sometimes expressing oneself through dance in front of others helps people understand personal pain
(Murcia, 2010) because dancing is what feelings look like. A logical question: If people are not dancing as much as they used to in front of others, where are they expressing themselves? It seems that people are interacting less in person and relying more on social media and the internet
(Turkle, 2011). With Science Genius, however, students receive the opportunity to express both good and bad scenarios in person. If a student needs help or is going through a problem, those around who notice will understand that student better.
Early educators who taught Native Americans viewed them as wild people who did not listen while being taught (Tierney, 1992), similar to how educators sometimes view Black and
Brown students in class today (Gregory & Mosley, 2004). When a student’s strengths cannot be utilized in a classroom setting because the teacher does not understand him or her, the student can feel out of place (Tobin, 2001). The student may also feel that the survival skills already learned are not of value and, subsequently, neither is the student. Some students are able to speak loudly by calling out to friends in their buildings, but typically students are rewarded for being quiet in school. Along with this feeling of being undervalued, there is also a consistent language barrier hindering a person of color’s school experience.
48 Barriers to Learning
I have observed three language barriers in the classroom: the language of (a) the teacher,
(b) the textbook, and (c) the material itself. All three differ from what students of color are often accustomed to (Smitherman, 1997). These barriers are additional reasons why students typically disengage from school. My use of ‘language’ refers to how someone talks and, consequently speaks to the way language determines how one views the world. For example, the students’ science teacher typically may not look like them or come from a similar background (Tyson,
Darity & Castellino, 2005). Consequently, the student must attempt to learn the teacher’s language to comprehend the reading material. If English is a student’s second language, not only does the student have to interpret what a teacher is saying, but also how it relates to what the student is learning (Bax, 2003). In addition, the reading material is typically written by authors who do not look like the students. Lastly, most of the scientific or technological terminology and jargon they are reading are their own universal language, apart from the students (Shanahan &
Beck, 2006).
In terms of socioeconomics, Black and Brown families earn less money than White families (Carruthers & Wanamaker, 2017). These circumstances would have some believe that
Black and Brown individuals only see despair because of their economic status. However, when
Black and Brown high school students were given a camera 10 years ago and asked to capture a day in their community, they brought back beautiful images, according to unpublished research by Dr. Emdin (Personal communication, September 13, 2017). The pictures displayed low- income houses with sunsets behind them and plenty of smiles. The pictures indicated that even
49 with the idea of not being as financially stable as others, Black and Brown students still find a reason to smile.
Underutilized Time Before Class
Many educational traditions tend to limit what students can initiate in their own learning.
Students should have an opportunity to express their view of the material they are encountering
(Baxter, 1992). This would allow their cultural identity to be meshed with the material they are learning so they do not rely solely on the textbook as their only means of interpreting a situation, thus allowing them to come up with new ways of not only thinking but also viewing the world.
One time where new concepts could be expressed is before class. Unfortunately, students do not believe class starts until the teacher arrives. Students should be encouraged to use time before class to discuss the innovations needed to create a positive learning environment for everyone
(Norris, 2002). Student reflections on their experiences in the classroom are vital to learning and need to be shared. The time before class may be a good space for this to occur because the teacher’s presence may intimidate students’ ability to express their learning experiences.
Students do not regularly lead discussions in a typical classroom, more schools could encourage students to explain concepts to one another to increase their understanding of the subject as peer mentors (Emdin, 2010). Debate and forensic teams can help lead students toward becoming more comfortable communicating their thoughts.
50 Competitive Speech (Argumentation, Forensic Discourse, and Debate)
Communication is essential to good school performance (Newton, Driver, & Osborne,
1999). Lewis (2004) noted that in numerous cultures, quality speaking skills have been valued since the very earliest days. In the United States, the historical respect for excellent speaking skills led to the development of interscholastic competitive speech (Barfield, 1989). The three terms that people use when describing competitive speech are argumentation, debate, and forensic discourse; in some cases, they can mean the same thing. There are many benefits to incorporating competitive speech into the academic setting. Barfield (1989) proved that students who participated in debate received gains in their grade point averages (GPAs) and their SAT scores. Twenty years later, Peter (2009) did a follow-up study to Barfield’s work, confirming his results by sharing that students who participated in competitive forensics also received higher
SAT scores, specifically in the writing and reading sections.
Collier (2004) also confirmed that that “debaters achieve significantly higher grades and intend to attend college at a substantially greater rate than their non-debating peers” (p. 28). Her study also suggested that participating in debate provides students with the requisite tools to resist negative peer pressure. She hypothesized that “debate gives students a reason to achieve, and a reason to reject risky behaviors” (p. 27). Collier also suggested that students with forensic experience may learn how to use words instead of violence to solve problems. According to this data, debate may improve critical thinking and alter behavior.
Several studies have reported that participation in debate increases the critical thinking of debate students (Allen, Berkowitz, Hunt, & Louden, 1999). Debate participation promotes problem solving, creative reasoning, and thoughts that make ideas more meaningful (Bellon,
51 2000). Debate students are taught to synthesize an assortment of complex information, practice innovativeness, and implement different ways of knowing (Bellon, 2000). Learning better approaches to thinking can have expansive impacts on each part of a student’s life, even mental and emotional maturity.
Debate requires students to engage with serious subject matter in a mature and professional environment. Debate students show more maturity in the face of adversity and will in general create stronger relationships with companions and mentors than the average student
(Carr, 2000). In addition, debate encourages students to recognize how others think, which improves their ability to cooperate and resolve conflicts (Infante & Wigley, 1986).
Fundamentally, debate increases students’ self-confidence by showing them the aptitudes that are important to become skilled grown-ups. By and large, the abilities referenced above lead debate students to remarkable professions.
Many top administrators and high-positioned authorities in all parts of government are previous secondary school debaters (Colbert & Thompson, 1985). Debate students tend to become pioneers in their schools and networks since they create solid listening aptitudes, respect, and self-confidence, and regularly take on solid influential positions inside their teams. Finally, debate students tend to be politically active and have elevated levels of urban engagement. This is especially valid for women and students of color because debate skills help to break down traditional barriers to urban engagement (Bellon, 2000). Many students have reported that participation in debates was the most educational and rewarding aspect of their high school careers.
52 Competitive speech is a proven model that has been shown to improve grades, test scores, critical thinking, emotional maturity, and career path decisions for those who participate. As noted earlier, Science Genius is a program that has been shown to encourage STEM participation while utilizing hip-hop. What if Competitive Speech was combined with Science Genius, given that data have suggested that both work effectively? I have termed this collaboration as battle pedagogy as its origins are also derived from battle rap.
Battle Pedagogy
The origins of battle rap can be found in a vintage verbal play known as the dozens. As noted earlier, the dozens is a traditional African American game in which one talks about someone’s mother, family, or appearance in a humorous or sarcastic way; sometimes the game can contain sexual innuendos (Foster, 1986, p. 215) for teasing purposes. Another game that helped start battle rap was the notion of “signifyin,” which consists of speakers denigrating another speaker through witty play on words and irony (Adams, 1984). Battle rap consists of two rappers verbalizing their rap lyrics and often demonstrating the message they are trying to convey in an effort to out-duel their opponent. This battle usually occurs in front of an audience.
In battle pedagogy, two individuals compete against each other in either a one-on-one or team effort. The goal is to see who can discuss STEM content in the most braggadocious and witty way. Although students are allowed to choose any musical genre they prefer, many choose hip-hop because of its popularity and because battle pedagogy is essentially battle rap using science terms. Incorporating battle rap culture into a classroom can allow students the opportunity to act out what they are learning and, possibly, how they are feeling. According to
53 Vaughn and Winner (2000), students who participated in acting courses did better on the SAT than students who did not. As noted earlier, music can be an integral part of enhancing a student’s academics, and so can acting. Songs can be incorporated into the learning process as the focus of the lesson or as a supplement to enrich learning (Bennett, 2002; Crowther, 2006;
Jenson, 2005; Wallace, 1994).
Given that Armstrong (2000) suggested teachers should “expand their repertoire of techniques, tools and strategies beyond the typical linguistic and logical ones predominantly used in U.S. classrooms” (p. 38), battle pedagogy is unique in how it combines acting, engagement, competitive speech, STEM, and music. Incorporating aspects of battle rap in STEM can be the hook that engages students enough to pursue a career within the STEM disciplines and assist them in recalling the content. As Peterson and Thaut (2007) suggested, “music provides a helpful mnemonic for verbal learning throughout life and most notably during early development and in educational settings” (p. 217). In their study, participants were asked to recall information presented either orally or musically while the researchers monitored brain activity using an electroencephalogram (EEG). Conclusions from the study indicated that the brain responds differently to music, and music and songs can be effective mnemonic devices for facilitating student engagement (Peterson & Thaut, 2007). In other words, if the academic content were set in a musical format, students would be able to remember it better.
School science is hands-on, but it should also be a minds-on activity. Serendip Studio is trying to change that by creating interactive lessons that allow students to apply what they are learning to real-world situations through gamification and technology. Many teachers who are hired to teach in urban city schools have not perfected this technique because they were never
54 taught how to integrate a group’s background into the lesson plan so students can comprehend the material (Borges, 2016).
College Students
With the wealth of information at our fingertips, students have the opportunity to become increasingly brilliant, yet they seldom have the opportunity to be creative in an academic setting while challenging themselves and having fun. Students in school are losing social skills but gaining content, and in today’s world, both are necessary for networking purposes. According to a recently released study conducted at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, 75% of U.S. college students have experienced “significant stress” and a quarter of them have been diagnosed with “a mental health condition” (Liu, Stevens, Yasui, Chen, & Wong, 2018, p.??). These findings are consistent with data from the American College Health Association’s (2018) National College
Assessment, which revealed that 63% of college students nationwide experienced overwhelming anxiety, 42% reported feeling so depressed it was difficult to function, and 12% experienced serious suicidal ideation within the past 12 months. Music has been shown to reduce depression and improve mental health in college students (Ashida, 2000; Schmid & Aldrige, 2004; Wang,
Wang, & Zhang, 2011).
Battle pedagogy is one way of incorporating music into the classroom. It allows students to compete against each other and create music within a genre of preference about the course curriculum/materials to better the other. I could have allowed students to create a song about science and have them perform it; however, I allowed them to compete against each other in the hope that direct competition would push them farther than they may have pushed themselves.
55 For example, if I ask students to run a mile, they will run it at their own pace without problem.
However, if I ask students to race a mile against someone else, they will run differently, given the nature of competition in a 1 vs. 1 or 2 vs. 2 battle. Beating their opponent does not affect the student’s grade; it is more about pride, about not being outperformed, and about relaying information. Directly competing against another in a 1 vs. 1 or 2 vs. 2 battle allows students to direct their words towards another person, giving the process/experience a direction. Students can be teased little, in hopes the teasing prepares them to be able to handle someone telling them something about themselves that may make them feel bad about themselves in the future. Since the students know this is for fun; they can direct their love, joy, or pain to someone else in order to be heard and understood. This concept will also help students with composure. Composure is important so individuals do not react to situations without thinking them through (Richards &
Gross, 1999). Speaking of composure, how composed should students be if they cannot fully understand their teacher?
Diversity
How far should communication and language go for real science? Should there be more terms in biochemistry for individuals who face learning disabilities, such as being deaf or blind, in Braille and sign language, or only basic terms? As new discoveries are made in research labs, and words or terms are created to name them, based on my research, there is no one designated specifically to making sure new STEM terms are assigned characteristics for Braille or for signing. This analysis begs the question: Who is science really trying to teach? Emdin (2017)
56 argued that science is tailored for those whom society believes will improve it. What if everyone, including all students, could improve science?
If more students were given the opportunity to have a quality education, U.S. test scores would improve (Foster, 1990). More importantly, such an opportunity would introduce new perspectives for looking at a social problem and addressing it. For example, if everyone in a doctor’s office is looking at a disease and comes from the same background, they will likely give the same diagnosis. However, a different perspective can lead to a different diagnosis (Elstein,
2009). That diversity in opinion may cure the patient and, hopefully, the disease itself. While student motivation is critical, what about the teacher’s perspective and motivation can lead to significant change for students?
Engagement vs. Content
When looking at teacher education, has this question ever been fully addressed: What is more important, content or engagement? Ball and Forzani (2009) argued that we need to move away from an orientation that asks, “What do teachers need to know?” and toward one that asks,
“What do they need to do?” This statement indicates the importance of not only the aspect of teachers perfecting the content for their course, but also teachers being able to deliver the knowledge they possess effectively to the students. Lee and Krapfl (2002) found that Basic
Science Minor graduates professed a preference for “hands-on” teaching that emphasized student engagement over a text-driven approach to science teaching. Despite measures to improve teacher education, there have been very few ways to assess the efficiency of such programs. It is reassuring that adjustments in the field are in the works. Nevertheless, the graduate education
57 system is 100 years old, with its fundamental format directed at preparing students primarily for research careers in academia. Evidence from students, recent graduates, and employers has suggested that the system has not fully kept pace with broader changes in society or in the ways science and engineering are practiced or learned (Slayback, 2018).
The National Academy of Education (2010) shared that one way to combat the lack of teacher preparation within the classroom is to give teachers teaching experience while they are still in school. While much attention has focused on students not doing well in schools, not enough attention has been spent on whether teachers have had enough training to teach them
(Zeichner & Tabachnick, 1979).
As discussed in Chapter 1, graduate students are apprehensive about investing time out of their research to perfect being a teacher because there are limited full-time tenure-track positions within the STEM field (Bers & Calhoun, 2002). In the event tenure is achieved, professors seldom alter their style of teaching to fit the ever-changing ways students receive information
(Valli & Buese, 2007). Based on this, graduate students have little incentive to improve their teaching. Graduate student surveys have revealed that they felt teaching-related experiences have inhibited them from being able to focus on their research duties as doctoral students (Tamara,
1999). However, contrasting evidence has shown that graduate students who received teacher training were better at communicating their ideas and publishing in higher-impact journals
(David & Mcfarlane-Dick, 2006). Teacher development is key to ensuring an increase in the
STEM workforce. One key component to teacher development is fostering and monitoring engagement because “learning begins with student engagement” (Shulman, 2005, p. 38). It is
58 necessary to differentiate satisfaction from engagement; Barkley (2010) highlighted that
“engaging students doesn’t mean they’re being entertained. It means they are thinking” (p. 12).
Studies have shown that teachers learn a great deal of content while earning their doctoral degree in STEM fields (DeJarnette, 2012); however, their ability to discuss and transfer the information they know they possess to a classroom in an engaging way is limited (Skinner &
Belmont, 1993). Teachers/preservice teachers should have courses in engagement or more professional development workshops while teaching (Heather, Laursen, & Hunter 2008). This leads to another question: Should engagement courses for teachers come before, during, or after the content material they learn? Although there is a plethora of evidence supporting the importance of engaging course work (Scott, Pazzaglia, & Gilboy, 2016), there seems to be a gap in the literature on when exactly is the optimal time to provide training on how to engage students, and should it actually occur before the content is mastered.
Engagement courses should focus on all that is necessary to engage students of all races and to find ways to cope with and adjust for differences in language, behavior, and appearance
(Chun-Mei & Kuch, 2005). Many teachers form stereotypes about students or locations that manifest through microaggressions in the way they teach (Scott & Rodriguez, 2015). If those same teachers experienced different settings, however, they would teach with more awareness of their impact on their students.
Studies have suggested that enhancing predoctoral students’ teaching should be postponed until they become postdocs as that would allow them more time to dedicate to receiving information about teaching and not be bogged down with the pressure of trying to graduate (Liechty, Liao & Schull, 2009). Although this would be a huge step, one aspect that
59 goes unnoticed is the trauma inflicted to the psyche of STEM graduate students during their doctoral pursuits.
The Mental Health of Future STEM Professors
According to the Graduate Assembly (2014), between 42% and 48% of University of
California—Berkeley PhD students in science and engineering are depressed. Science and engineering PhD students also reported minimal career optimism and academic engagement
(Graduate Assembly, 2014). People who are depressed seldom see a specialist, and depressed individuals can begin to become increasingly depressed once the initial onset occurs (Kessler,
1997). If another individual is in emotional pain, in some cases others can sense what the person may be going through (Leary & Springer, 2016). The problem occurs when students interact with professors who may be depressed; this may pervade their lessons, potentially contributing to a low attrition rate in STEM. Perhaps if teachers were taught how to channel depression or uncertainties about life by putting negative emotions into music, that could improve the mental health of those who need it. Studies have suggested that music can decrease depression and improve both mental health and creativity (Cheek, Bradley, Parr, & Lan, 2003). Understanding the mechanisms within battle rap that allow artists to communicate effectively about personal issues, while continuing to engage an audience, may help STEM teachers improve engagement within their classroom. Battle rap can help engage teachers or be used as a technique that could be taught in teacher development workshops to assist in improving lessons provided by STEM faculty. One aspect of battle rap is that it allows a platform where people can express their feelings without feeling judged. If we create an atmosphere where teachers express themselves
60 through song, students witnessing this may feel more comfortable expressing their own concerns that they may have bottled up inside. One group of people who least often seeks help for mental health in the United States are people of color (Corrigan, Watson, Byrne, & Davis, 2005).
Creating a space where students can feel connected with their teachers would be advantageous, especially for Black people within the STEM disciplines. Given that Black people are the most likely group to leave STEM, connecting STEM to aspects that draw Black people may help bridge the gap; that connection is hip-hop.
Being Black in America
Hip-hop music has strayed from its roots and no longer discusses the struggles of people of color (Chrobak, 2018). It is now commercialized and sold back to the urban community by the
1% of the population who run the United States—the 1% whose ancestors capitalized and garnered their wealth off the free labor of slaves and created systems that do not allow people to have equal access to resources, knowledge, or land that was given to others (Mabogunje, 1970).
While people of color slaved for centuries, the 1% was in the house, thinking of ways to maintain the status quo to the points where they justify living off others’ labor by saying the masses cannot survive without their guidance and enslavement is for their own good. The 1% has created a method of disenfranchising the urban population through racism, but has hidden direct racism under methods like redlining, Urban Renewal (unofficially called “Negro Removal”), and
White flight, all of which have had direct effects on creating and perpetuating the abject conditions of Black ghettoes (Asante, 2008). According to Tupac:
61 If I know that in this hotel room they have food every day, and I’m knocking on the door
every day to eat and they open the door, let me see the party, let me see them throwing
salami all over; I mean, just throwing food around [and] they’re telling me there’s no
food. Every day, I’m standing outside trying to sing my way in: “We are hungry, please
let us in. We are hungry, please let us in.” After about a week that song is gonna change
to, “We hungry, we need some food.” After two, three weeks, it’s like, “Give me the food
or I’m breaking down the door.” After a year you’re just like, “I’m picking the lock,
coming through the door blasting!” It’s like, you hungry, you reached your level. We
asked ten years ago. We was asking with the [Black] Panthers. We was asking with the
Civil Rights Movement. We was asking. Those people that asked are dead and in jail. So
now what do you think we’re gonna do? Ask?
Here Tupac shared how hard it was growing up and watching his ancestors begging, beaten, arrested, murdered, and singing for scraps to eat while their oppressors feasted and denied entry to the oppressed. After some time, when people realized they would die without basic necessities such as food, they either began stealing from or even murdered to make ends meet for themselves and their families. Many people of color from the Black Civil Rights movement were murdered by groups who did not want people of color to have equal rights in the
United States (Kim, 1998). The Black Panthers (a group created to educate, inform, protect, and feed people of color created, in part, because the government was not doing it) were hunted and murdered (Goforth, 2019). One murder specifically triggered a riot in California.
62 One injustice was the situation of Rodney King, who was recorded being beaten by police in an excessive arrest (Martin, 2005). Because none of the officers went to jail, riots, car burnings, and lootings exploded in response. One reason people felt emboldened to respond this way was tied to the #1 song on the radio at the time: “Fuck the Police” by NWA, which discussed disdain for the way people of color are consistently harassed by law enforcement
(Martin, 2005). The 1% of the population who runs the United States recognized that and blocked radio play of songs that spread awareness or empowered people. Instead, songs about drugs, sex, and partying received the marketing budget to shift minds from conscious to passive consumers, distracting them from serious issues each time they listened to music (Alim, 2007).
The 1% could have resorted to outrightly murdering groups of Black people as the government did in Tulsa, Oklahoma with a bomb (Mayes, 2016). The 1% decided to destabilize communities of color by creating loopholes in the law. For example, after the abolition of slavery, the
Thirteenth Amendment allowed for servitude to continue if the person committed a crime. Black people of color are still imprisoned at higher percentages than any other race (Burch, 2015).
Black people also receive lower wages, are not protected from discrimination, and attend the worst schools in America (Darling-Hammond, 2000). The government realized it did not have to murder people of color in order to get rid of them; all they had to do was give them fewer liberties than others or completely neglect them.
All living things in the natural world cannot thrive when they are neglected, and this is evident from plants which require sunlight, water, and good soil (Epstein et al., 1980). Without these essentials, plants would perish. They do not even have to be physically destroyed to perish, but just exist in a hostile environment that fails to fill their needs and causes them to die from
63 natural causes. This analogy extends to neighborhoods of color, which are denied adequate schools, healthcare, natural foods, and decent employment (Little, 2003). Similarly, disposing of a domestic pet into the wild without providing it with survival skills not only endangers it, but also inadvertently removes the burden of guilt from the owner who will not see what happens to it and assumes it can survive on its own. This is the state of being Black or Brown in America.
Black and Brown people and those of other cultures both listen and create hip-hop music as a form of therapy (Kobin & Tyson, 2006); however, there remain limitations within the space.
Conceptual Framework
Cultural Melding: A New Age of Reason
Peter Diamandis (2012), author of the book Abundance, shared that coffee houses were essential during the Age of Reason and the innovation period in history. For one cent, any appropriately dressed person could sip coffee, allowing the rabble to mix with the royals. Mixing cultures then bred great ideas and spurred innovation in the 1800s, helping America become the powerhouse it is today. In my Anatomy, Cell Biology and Physiology courses, students chose hip-hop songs and verses or rapped over other genres. Incorporating hip-hop into science—two areas with historically different demographics—can help change the ideology of science itself.
Different demographics have represented these two areas, and it is time that they worked together for a greater good.
Incorporating music into schools is not a novel idea. For example, Christopher Emdin has been incorporating music into STEM courses for almost two decades with middle and high school students to make them more interactive and student-centered. I felt college students could
64 benefit from a more interactive approach as well. There is a disconnect in the way students are receiving information in academic settings (Dickerson & Kubasko, 2007). Incorporating people’s emotions into the classroom instead of simply lecturing to them will allow them to internalize the material more efficiently (Northedge, 2003). I have been incorporating the arts to allow students to use music to problematize science. Through music, they can learn to express themselves to others, which is important for talking with patients, other researchers, and the public as they make breakthroughs in science as well as possibly in education. This also gives students a therapeutic outlet as so many STEM students do not have time to communicate with their closest friends because they study so much; communicating within the classroom would at least be helping them make friends in the class to remain sane and social. Schools must be malleable to the needs of the students while they are in class, so they do not harm themselves or someone else in other settings.
The goal of this project, then, was to use a constructivist and intellectual warrior lens to observe what aspects of battle rap could improve engagement for teachers and students within the STEM field. Since hip-hop was created by Black and Brown individuals (Land & Stovall,
2009), and STEM is dominated by the White and Asian community in the United States
(Herrara, 2005), mixing the two may be the cultural blend necessary to innovate the STEM field.
Battle pedagogy can be a tool for professors to use as a way to retain students within the STEM field. Mixing cultures could do for STEM what the mixing of cultures did for the Age of Reason.
65 Constructivism
Constructivism is a theory for building knowledge based on the ideology that properly receiving information occurs through experience and making sense of the world. When students encounter new experiences, they integrate them with previous occurrences to build onto established knowledge structures or to redesign them. According to Fox (2001), learning is an active process of constructing knowledge; while it is personal in nature, it is built through a social process in order to make sense of the world. Pellegrino, Chudowsky, and Glaser (2001) discussed learning in terms of cognitive theory, which is based on constructivism in that it describes learning as an active process by which knowledge structures are built as students are exposed to new experiences and information. The role of prior knowledge is critically important in developing conceptual understandings. According to my research of peer reviewed journals, incorporating aspects of battle rap have not been implemented into academic classrooms. If students truly need new experiences within the classroom to help structure their knowledge, and hip-hop has been proven to assist in learning, and battle rap is a sub culture of hip-hop, then battle rap could be a constructivist mechanism used to assist students to learn subjects in school like STEM.
Teachers and students using their content knowledge in STEM to interact socially using battle rap may help students interpret old information in a new way based on the way the way it is delivered. Paving the way for improvements on old STEM material, or the building of completely new knowledge bases within STEM.
66 Intellectual Warrior
In the 1700s, Haiti was essentially owned by France. It was not until January 1, 1804, when Haitians finally received their independence through a revolution that lasted 13 years
(Girard, 2013). The rebellion could not have taken place without Dutty Boukman (Poujol-Oriol,
2005), who is known as the original leader of the slave rebellion—a priest whom some said knew voodoo. He gathered the slaves and asked who was tired of their situation; several of them raised their hands. Next, he asked who would sacrifice their body right now to motivate everyone to win this war. One man volunteered; his blood was put on the other men’s foreheads in the shape of a cross. Those men went on to initiate a war against one of the most powerful nations in the world. People were initially terrified, but once they saw that man sacrifice his life for them, there was nothing they would not do for each other. The person who made that sacrifice was an intellectual warrior.
The parallel to this intellectual warrior of history is the person who goes to school despite being ridiculed or unaccepted by the dominant group. Some individuals attend school for their people and their community and sacrifice their comfort zone. The intellectual warrior believes in a vision more than in the air they breathe. They understand the war may continue beyond their own lives, but an immediate death would be better than living 100 years as the society is. The thought of watching a feast while others starve is unfathomable but could happen to anyone at any time.
Dr. Joe L. Kincheloe wrote more than 45 books, many book chapters, and hundreds of journal articles on issues including radical education, cultural studies, critical pedagogy, urban studies, and curriculum. He selflessly spent his career working to alleviate human suffering.
67 Over time, he coined the term intellectual warrior (warrior intellectual), and he created a list of characteristics an intellectual warrior may possess (Kincheloe, 2006).
Warrior intellectuals are tough young men and women who:
• Develop the ability to think critically and analytically.
• Cultivate their intellects.
• Understand the world as it is in relation to what it could be.
• Interpret and make sense of the world around them by understanding the invisible forces
at work in shaping particular situations.
• Employ their creative ability to get beyond ritualized but failed practices in school and
society.
• Use their imagination to transcend the trap of traditional gender, racial, sexual, and
class-based stereotypes and the harm they can cause in individual lives and the larger
society.
• Re-conceptualize the role of "good citizen” in a way that speaks and acts in relation to
dominant power and how it oppresses those around them
• Develop the ability to teach themselves what they need to know to take on a particular
task
• Cultivate a humility that allows them to be both good leaders and good members of
diverse learning communities
• Devote themselves to never ending, lifelong growth as citizens, parents workers,
teachers, scholars, researchers, and lovers. (Kincheloe, 2006, p. xxvi)
68 Dr. Kincheloe’s former student, Tony Monchinksi, described his first impression of an intellectual warrior as follows:
I first heard about the idea of an “intellectual warrior” in the one class I was lucky enough to take with Joe L. Kincheloe. Joe had developed the idea of a warrior of the intellect with his urban students in mind, a way for these kids to envision what it might mean to be a scholar in a socio-historical context that downplays or denigrates education, that accused anyone who takes their education seriously of “selling out” or “Uncle Tom ism. (Monchinksi, 2011 p.
CLIX)
The words “intellectual warrior” are simple, yet complex ideas that summarize the mission Dr. Kincheloe embraced. He made many enemies when discussing oppression and working to dismantle destructive pedagogical structures that have been in place for centuries.
The concept of being an intellectual warrior is essential for individuals in any industry, especially teachers. Teachers can arguably be called the gate keepers of society as they spend a considerable amount of time among communities and citizens. Teachers need encouragement in order to try new learning techniques that they feel will spark students to think in ways that the textbooks of the time may not be able to get them to in order for them to become financially stable. Teachers should be taught to challenge their administration and society (with evidence) in order to alter policies that may not be creating a positive learning environment for all students.
Teachers should challenge students to think beyond their own experiences and so students can see the world differently. Intellectual warriors are essential to society because they can assist in challenging norms that may not encompass the input of everyone who is impacted by said norms.
Intellectual warriors are important in the education system because students in the U.S. are being
69 outperformed in the education space by a plethora of other countries (OECD, 2016). To combat this gap in education among U.S. students it will require intellectual warriors to display new methods of teaching students.
The professional battle rappers who participated in this study are intellectual warriors because they could have been ridiculed by fans for “trying to seem to seem smart.” The students who participated in the battle rap are intellectual warriors because they could have been viewed as “trying to seem cool.” These individuals understood that the mission behind the performance was not only to give a good show, but also to pervade people’s minds with science with the hope of reinforcing abstract STEM philosophies in them. If students hear science terminology frequently, they can gravitate toward it and remember it better. STEM is not promoted to the masses, but mainly to middle-class White Americans. If it was truly promoted to the masses, textbooks and posters within schools would feature more women and minorities as scientists
(Brickhouse, Lowery, & Schultz, 2000). The advancement of STEM would be more discussed within the media and have more diverse characters playing in STEM roles (Basu & Barton,
2006). I believe it is necessary to incorporate minorities into academics; otherwise, STEM will always be seen through the same cultural lens. Variation in thought will drive the culture forward, with more ways to view a situation and build different products. Should the culture thrive under this variation, the view of science (how it is constructed) and school in general would change.
In summary, I discussed the importance of incorporating a new form of active learning called battle pedagogy, in which characteristics from battle rap are used to improve students’
STEM engagement. Battle pedagogy can be used as a form of teacher development to help
70 teachers connect with students more effectively. Students can also use battle pedagogy as a way to create mnemonics for STEM content to help them retain information, socialize, and have fun while learning. I also shed light on the theoretical framework this research embodied, which is constructivism and intellectual warrior. I ended the chapter by sharing the importance of constructivism in my work. Then, I discussed and defined what an intellectual warrior is and provided stories of individuals who were not afraid to try something new.
In the next chapter, I discuss the methodology of the study as an overview.
71 Chapter III
METHODOLOGY
I submitted an application for ethics approval from the appropriate IRBs from Teachers
College, Columbia University, as well as the post-secondary school where I conducted my study in order to be in a position to collect data. This application included information on the background/context, problem statement, purpose statement, and research questions (outlined in
Chapter I); the literature review (presented in Chapter II); and the methodological approach (as outlined in Chapter III). In this chapter, I give the rationale for the qualitative approach to answer the research questions for the study.
Rationale for Qualitative Research Design
Qualitative research is based on a social constructivist philosophy which acknowledges that learning is formed through socialization and interactions that are part of a shared rather than an individual experience (Vygotsky, 1978). A qualitative researcher investigates a social situation or interaction by penetrating the core of another’s world, in an effort to comprehend his or her lived experiences (Bogdan & Biklen, 1998; Creswell, Hanson, Plano, & Morales, 2007;
Merriam, 1998, 2002; Patton, 1990; Schram, 2003). Qualitative research studies can give an assortment of results to scientists and researchers, including: (a) a portrayal of procedures, connections, settings and circumstances, frameworks, or individuals; (b) understanding of information that can clarify, create, expound, or clear up the real world as well as hypothesize;
(c) confirmation of suspicions, cases, speculations, or speculations in certifiable settings; and (d) assessment of specific arrangements, practices, or developments (Peshkin, 1993). This kind of
72 research looks for understanding based on unmistakable methodological conventions of questioning that investigate a social or human issue.
In qualitative research, the researcher constructs a complex, comprehensive picture, investigates words, and reports nitty-gritty perspectives of witnesses (Peshkin, 1993). The premise of qualitative research lies in the interpretive way to deal with social reality and in the depiction of the lived encounters of people. Qualitative scientists do not accept the idea of an extreme truth; however, there might be alternate points of view held by various people, with every viewpoint having some type of legitimacy (Bogdan & Biklen, 1998; Denzin & Lincoln,
2002; Leedy & Ormrod, 2005; Merriam, 1998). As for using elements of music, specifically battle rap as a tool to navigate and engage a diverse audience in science, a qualitative approach is suitable as it: (a) takes into consideration the complexity of various situations that may occur in a given environment; (b) creates logical comprehension; (c) encourages a dialogue among the researcher and participants; (d) takes on an interpretive position; and (e) keeps an adaptive structure.
Rationale for Case Study Methodology
Within the framework of a qualitative approach, this study was well suited for a case study design. Merriam’s (1998) consideration of a case as broad enough to warrant being constituted by a person, group, program, specific policy, and so on allowed for a case study to be appropriately applied to this particular study. Also, Merriam’s description of case study research as particularistic, descriptive, and heuristic fit well with the nature of this study. This study focused specifically on Black American professional battle rappers who have been on television;
73 have over 100,000 followers on social media (Instagram, Facebook, Twitter); and have shed light on their experiences with science in the public school system and effective ways of engaging an audience in science.
The case was defined by Miles and Huberman (1994) as a phenomenon occurring in a bounded context—in short, the unit of analysis. In this particular study, the case was focused on the factors that allow Black and Brown professional battle rappers in New York to maintain the engagement of their audience, through an investigation of their use of science, the creative process, and past schooling experiences. All artists were based in the New York metropolitan area, raised in an urban environment, and acquired little to no college in order to ensure they had not received prior professional training in teaching. The geographical boundary ensured that all artists were based in the New York metropolitan area in order to make face-to-face interviews accessible for the researcher and participants. Professional battle rappers were sought so that they could easily break down complex science topics in relatable ways as if they were experts in the
STEM field. Artists were also required to self-identify as Black or Brown to be included in this study.
Further, as Merriam (1998) indicated, the qualitative case study is an ideal design for understanding and interpreting educational phenomena:
A case study design is employed to gain an in depth understanding of the situation and meaning for those involved. The interest is in process rather than outcomes, in context rather than a specific variable, in discovery rather than confirmation. Insights gleaned from case studies can directly influence policy, practice, and future research. (p. 19)
74 This study fit well with Merriam’s consideration of case study because it sought to better understand the lived experiences of Black American battle rappers, with over 100,000 followers, to understand what characteristics are necessary to engage an audience in science. As outlined in detail, the results of this study can contribute to considerations of new and revised policies and practices as well as future research opportunities.
Methodology
Data Collection
The battle rappers in this research study entered into a space of uncharted territory to engage students of color in science. They had never explored this avenue, but they were greatly appreciated by the crowd and in comments on YouTube. Not only did the school (Teachers
College, Columbia University) take a risk on holding the event, but the artists did as well.
In this study, I conducted focus groups with participants about their past experiences in science courses and their conceptions of how incorporating battle rap may engage them in the sciences. Focus groups generally consist of 7-10 individual participants, although this number can vary (Marshall & Rossman, 2006). Focus groups are part of an interview process called group interviews. As Frey and Fontana (1991) states:
The group interview is a tool that social researchers should consider utilizing, particularly
as a strategy to obtain phenomenological data in natural settings. The sole purpose of this
technique is not limited to exploratory inquiry or to the development of procedures and
questionnaire items for subsequent quantitative studies. It is a technique that can stand
75 alone as a procedure for obtaining data on any social context that is being studied in an
ethnographic manner. (p. 184)
While Marshall and Rossman’s (2006) recommendations related to the number and timing of the interviews, suggestions by Stake (1995) and Glesne (2006) guided the format of my interviews and the types of questions to ask. According to Glesne (2006), the type of interview most appropriate when discussing an experience is the topical style with a semi-structured format. Stake (1995) suggested that interviews for case study research begin with a brief list of questions and use probes to generate descriptions and explanations. He suggested that interviews provide indirect evidence about a phenomenon and are best used “to obtain the descriptions and interpretations of others” (p. 64). They are ideal for eliciting descriptions and explanations from different participants to discover multiple perspectives. Battle rap and student interview questions used for this study included basic topics and ideas to focus on, with a few open-ended questions that were intended to lead to more of an informal conversation. This approach is considered a hybrid interview type (Patton, 2002). Questions for each interview were designed to elicit participants’ experience, opinions, knowledge, and feelings about a specific topic.
Interviews were either video or audio recorded. Protocols for the battle rappers and students can be found in the Appendix.
Data Analysis
The challenge throughout data collection and analysis was to make sense of large amounts of data, reduce the volume of information, identify significant patterns, and construct a
76 framework for responding to the collected information. In this regard, Merriam (1998) cautioned researchers to make data analysis and data collection simultaneous activities to avoid the risk of repetitious, unfocused, and overwhelming data. The formal process of data analysis included assigning codes according to the categories and descriptors of the study's conceptual framework.
The coding process involved identifying common themes in participants’ responses and grouping them accordingly. Ryan and Bernard (2003) suggested a number of ways to code via transcripts including: identifying word repetitions and key words in context; constantly comparing and contrasting participant responses; introducing theoretical perspectives as a lens through which responses can be analyzed; searching for missing information; identifying and translating metaphors and analogies when used; and identifying transitions, connectors, and other commonly used devices.
77 Table 1
Summary of Data Collection
Research Questions Data Collection Procedure
1. What goes into the composition and delivery of ● Interviews
an effective method of engaging with an urban ● Performance Footage
audience? ● Triangulation
2. Which techniques do battle rappers implement ● Reflection Questions
that some teachers can begin to develop to allow them ● Focus Group Observations
to keep their students engaged?
3. How are battle rappers able to engage an
audience using science content and how does it differ
from a typical instructor discussing science content in a
classroom?
4. How can battle rap improve engagement within
stem courses?
5. What ways can battle rap assist in
learning STEM content?
6. Are there benefits of incorporating battle rap in
academic spaces outside of learning the material for that
course?
78 Validity
Within qualitative research, researchers are often both the data collector and data analyst, opening the potential for researcher bias (Miles & Huberman, 1994). Qualitative researchers might impose their personal beliefs and interests on all stages of the research process leading to the researcher’s voice dominating that of the participant (Mason, 2002). To avoid researcher bias,
I actively involved the research participants in checking and confirming the results. The method of returning an interview or analyzed data to a participant is known as member checking or respondent validation or participant validation. Member checking is used to validate, verify, or assess the trustworthiness of qualitative results (Doyle, 2007).
Lincoln and Guba (1986) established four criteria for quality data that were applied in this study. These criteria compare the concepts of validity, reliability, and rigor used to assess traditional research; they include credibility, transferability, dependability, and confirmability to address the issue of trustworthiness in the study. Credibility in this study was addressed by selecting multiple, representative cases to study the use of science songs for teaching and triangulation through use of multiple types of data. Transferability was addressed by providing thick, rich descriptions that included extensive field notes, interview transcripts, and analytic memos. Dependability and confirmability were provided through detailed transcripts and records documenting every aspect of the study.
79 A Study in Two Chapters
The data collected from each of the two studies encompassing this dissertation varied and are discussed in further detail in the data analysis section of the dissertation’s manuscript section which is presented in the next two chapters. The first study is discussed in Chapter IV and sought to understand the aspects of battle rap that can be used to engage students with STEM, and it is divided into two sections. The second study is found in Chapter V and explored a classroom that used battle rap as a tool for engagement among postsecondary STEM students. Chapter VI concludes the study by tying the conclusions of both studies together.
80 Chapter IV
THE USE OF BATTLE RAP TO EXPLORE NEW WAYS OF
ENGAGING STUDENTS IN STEM AND SCHOOL
Abstract: Research in STEM education indicates that student engagement with the instructor and in the course positively affects their learning. Unfortunately, in STEM courses on the undergraduate level, the extent to which students are engaged with their instructor is compromised by the structure of the classroom – large numbers of students in the lecture hall and proximity of the student to the instructor. In this paper I challenge the notion that engagement in STEM courses must be compromised by the existing structure and suggest a new model for engagement that reflects ways that individuals deliver and receive information in spaces that share an overall structure w STEM classes. Through an exploration of the hidden pedagogical approaches in hip-hop/ battle rap spaces, we suggest ways that instructors may lean into classroom innovation and an engaging learning environment. In this paper, I describe a novel pedagogical approach, showcase how it may be effective in delivering information writ large, and conduct an experiment on what it would look like as an approach to teaching science.
Keywords: Battle Rap, STEM, Science Education, Post-Secondary STEM Education, Hip-hop
Introduction
A deadly virus which originated in Asia spread through Europe and North America in
2019 and 2020 (Sanger, Kirkpatrick, Wee & Bennhold, 2020). The virus known to many as
81 Corona Virus, or COVID-19) was ruled a pandemic in March 2020 that could harm populations across the world (Branswell & Joseph 2020). Also, during this time, March 2020, measures to socially distance one individual from another were enforced in the U.S. to decrease the spread of the virus (Sanger, Kirkpatrick, Wee & Bennhold, 2020). At the risk of trivializing global pandemic and its impact on the world, I argue that the spread of science phobia across the country has reached extreme levels. Furthermore, the process of isolating or distancing to reduce the spread (that has been the existing protocol in the current pandemic) has not proven to have any impact on slowing down disinterest in science. The United States ranked a dismal 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science (Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development [OECD], 2016). What researchers have identified as a means to slow the increasing numbers of young people leaving STEM disciplines is not a distancing, but close engagement. I suggest that traditional STEM instruction in large lecture halls where the instructor does not engage the students equates to a non-successful method of distancing students from the instructor and the content.
Researchers have suggested that engagement is an important part of teaching (Klassen,
Perry, & Frenzel, 2019). If teachers do not know how to engage all students despite their backgrounds, some may have difficulty retaining and/or forging a connection to the content they need to learn. Additionally, if students cannot retain information, they will have difficulty actively participating in STEM (Skinner & Belmont 1993). I define active participation as being willing to research and go through the time and effort to make sense of the complex topics within the discipline. This is particularly challenging given that the culture of STEM is competitive and requires a “score-driven” approach to teaching and learning (Flanders, 2019).
82 The hyper-competitive/individual-focused instruction in science affects student’s inclinations to pursue content in the STEM (Flanders, 2019). More specifically, Black and
Brown youth of color from urban settings—whose interactions outside of school often involve emotional investment, active engagement, and collective success—find themselves gravitating toward cultures other than STEM (Klassen et al., 2019). Unbeknownst to many of these youth, and others who shy away from the STEM disciplines, to be a part of STEM today, one must be an engaged, informed, knowledgeable, and prepared for a competitive field, but also motivated to understand STEM and how it pertains to any objective (Tytler, Osborne, Williams, Tytler, &
Clark, 2008). In other words, the competitive nature of STEM is but a minor piece of a complex set of disciplines that requires engagement and connection. Teaching in the STEM fields must reflect this fact.
STEM instructors often enter the field inspired and wanting to improve the lives of their students but may not have the fundamentals of teaching understood enough to do so (Bursal &
Paznokas, 2006; NRC, 2007). My personal experiences in STEM classrooms indicate that teachers have issues maintaining enough of the students’ attention on classroom tasks for them to pass some academic courses. In response, I suggest that STEM teachers look at models of engagement and connection outside of their classrooms. One such place is in social spaces within hip-hop culture.
Hip-hop, which is a cultural phenomenon that contains a number of elements that engage audiences has a number of models for engagement. One of these is hip-hop battles. The hip-hop battle is a social space within hip-hop where two performers engage in competition around a particular skill set that both participants share. Battles may occur around dance and art, but most
83 prominently is found among rappers. Rappers are the story tellers and orators within the hip-hop community and communicate to their audiences in rhyme. Battle rappers have a particular skill set in rhyming/rapping and primarily engage in competition around this skill set with their peers in front of large audiences. In my studies of battle rap and battle rappers, I have seen them engage high school, and college age students’ attention for hours outside of school. More importantly, these spaces of engagement are similar to large lecture halls where STEM instruction traditionally exists. Contemporary battle rappers often perform in a room holding hundreds of audience members where they are on stage and are somewhat divided from their audience. Nevertheless, they present in ways that illicit responses from their audience, by responding to their audiences needs and by delivering information to them. This display of pedagogical skill by battle rappers causes me to interrogate what modes of communication/ interaction are battle rappers embracing that some teachers are not? Why are participants/ students captivated by rap battle performances? Why is it that students seldom review their professors’ lectures (as reported by students in interviews) but will replay a battle rap repeatedly?
Although hip-hop music and battle rap was started in the Bronx by disenfranchised Black and Brown youth, both can now be viewed on internationally aired commercials, sports, and television shows (Prince, 2007). Hip-hop's importance and prevalence is evident in many different avenues in America, therefore incorporating the culture of hip hop into the education system seems fitting.
The U.S. education system attracts some of the brightest minds in the world to its colleges and universities (Quddus & Rashid, 2003). However, many of the brightest minds in the
U.S. students do not enter postsecondary education in America because their forms of genius are
84 not recognized by institutions of higher education. Furthermore, issues like a lack of finances and lack of cultural relevance and/or engagement have been reported as a cause for certain students not being successful in school (Keller, 1987). Researchers suggest that students who attend school should be in classrooms that engage them in a variety of ways (Garfield,1995). I suggest that hip-hop is a language common to many youth that can help improve the education of ALL students (Broughton, 2017).
A major point of this article, and the essential use of battle rap in classrooms is the understanding that regardless of race, all teachers need to understand the cultural norms of different groups and allow them to influence how teachers structure their class exercises
(Richards, Brown, & Forde, 2007). Teachers must perceive non-dominant culture and diverse cultural approaches as assets to their teaching and learn how to engage with them academically
(Gay & Howard, 2000; Ladson-Billings, 2009; Milner, 2011; Nieto, 2004). A focus on battle rap is rooted in Black or Brown urban youth culture, but this does not necessarily mean they alone can use or be an advocate for elements of hip-hop in their classroom.
Conceptual Framework
This study is rooted in a sociocultural framework that explores the concepts of culture as they relate to being an intellectual warrior. I argue that particular cultural contexts develop intellectual warriors whose ways of knowing and being may be helpful for making sense of teaching and learning. In particular, I suggest that the contexts of urban spaces that gave birth to hip-hop culture also created battle rappers who are, in many ways intellectual warriors. Vygotsky states that “human activities take place in cultural context, [and] are mediated by
85 language” (John-Steiner & Mahn, 1996, p. 191). I suggest that the modes of communication of battle rappers are a unique language (with particular stylistic and linguistic traditions) that further position them as intellectual warriors.
I draw insight from Kincheloe (2006) who describes intellectual warriors as individuals who break societal norms in order to improve their life, or other individuals lives. He makes the argument that individuals who do intellectual work (describing the conditions, circumstances, experiences of marginalized population) may risk ridicule, their influence, relationships and even their income be positioned or seen as warriors. Here, I position those who focus on improving education at the expense of a number of personal/professional challenges as intellectual warriors.
The battle rappers who participated in this study are intellectual warriors because they risked their fan base and personal comfort to push STEM content to the masses. Battle rappers do not typically discuss STEM topics, or academic content of any sort. For battle rappers to rhyme about STEM, they risked losing their supporters, as supporters may feel the battle rappers no longer represent their ideals. Nonetheless, packaging STEM within battle rap, and essentially serving it to students through their culture can help students take on a science identity, which can increase the number of students eligible to be a part of the growing STEM workforce. In this type of scenario, students are accumulating and exchanging cultural capital within the classroom in hopes of keeping students engaged and retained within STEM. Bourdieu (1986) describes cultural capital as developing a conscious or unconscious personal investment in an activity or process. I suggest that science classrooms that allow aspects of battle rap in them, can help create ideal opportunities for individuals to begin investing time into making science a part of their cultural identity the way hip hop may be a part of their identity.
86 From preschool and even earlier, songs and rhymes are used as a method of teaching
(Paquette, Rieg, 2008). Starting with the “ABC Song” and “Five Little Monkeys on the Bed,” such songs train the brain to memorize information. As a result, hip-hop music, which uses the art of rap, should be used as a method of teaching science to our Black and Brown youth
(Akom , 2009). Not only does hip-hop music resonate with them, but the art of rapping is in itself a form of rhyming which stimulates one’s memory to recall information better (Green,
David, 2011). Therefore, educators are now using this music style to teach important science concepts to their students (Dunn, 1984). Not only is it engaging for them, but it is also motivating because it is part of their surrounding culture (Dunn, 1984). The subject becomes more relatable and transforms these students’ attitudes towards learning (Kitayama, 2002).
For these reasons, the Science Genius program has made it their mission to integrate the art of hip-hop culture into science (Emdin, Adjapong & Levy, 2016). Science Genius does so by engaging and creating a passion for science within Black and Brown youth. Not only does the program teach students STEM through rap, but it also provides training and teacher development for science teachers (Knowles, 1972). This program is transforming the way science is being taught and creating an effective method of learning (Emdin, Adjapong & Levy, 2016) The evolution of Science Genius into hosting battle rappers rhyming about STEM topics seemed fitting (Emdin, 2013).
Many urban students’ experiences outside of school are rooted in Hip-Hop culture
(Emdin, 2010). Urban students’ modes of communication, forms of non-verbal communication are rooted in Hip-Hop culture and aligning Hip-Hop culture with school has shown to improve learning (Adjapong, Levy, Emdin, 2016). Battle rap, is a form of Hip-hop. Since Hip-hip works,
87 perhaps exploring aspects of it like battle rap, will build upon previous hip-hop related work in academia known as Hip-Hop pedagogy. I suggest bringing Hip-Hop culture into urban classrooms and not only incorporating it into curricula, but also incorporating the culture into the ways in which teachers teach their students. Cultural relevancy through Hip-Hop pedagogy not only allows students to see themselves and a culture which they embrace as a part of the classroom, but it can also encourage independent self-instruction of science content; since students will take on an expanding role in their own learning (Ladson-Billings, 1995a). This paper provides insight on how aspects of battle rap can be incorporated into teaching to help improve interactions between teachers and students.
Research Question
1. What goes into the composition and delivery of an effective method of engaging with
an urban audience?
2. Which techniques do battle rappers implement that some teachers can begin to develop
to allow them to keep their students engaged?
3. How are battle rappers able to engage an audience using science content and how does
it differ from a typical instructor discussing science content in a classroom?
Methods
Battle Rap Professionals Setting
After attending and studying a number of rap battle videos (n-150) to identify the methods of engagement of battle rappers, I identified four battle rappers that successfully
88 engaged an audience in settings/events with multiple participants. In particular, I identified battle rappers that held the audience’s attention, elicited responses from the crowd, and had the audience repeat back words the rappers said. This led to an invitation of four prominent battle rappers to a recorded pre-interview in a private office about their experiences in schools, their personas and performances in battle rap, and their thoughts about its application to teaching and learning. These artists were selected to be part of this case study based on my observations of their work, their popularity, vast social media attention from over 350,000 followers combined, and their main audience which is urban youth of color. During this meeting they were then challenged to construct a battle rap around pre-selected science topics.
During an annual education conference four months after our initial interview, the participants performed in an auditorium of 300+ people—middle school, college, and graduate students; babies and parents; educators and academics—ranging in age from 1 to 70 years.
Following the performance, a post-interview was held directly in a nearby classroom after the participants performed that involved a reflection on the process of both creating and performing science themed raps for the battle. The pre interview lasted 1 hour and the post interview lasted
35 minutes. The interviews were in no way a comparison of their thoughts before and after their battle, but rather an extended exploration of what they believe are the best ways to engage an audience.
Professional Battle Rappers Procedure
I conducted a focus group with four of the top American battle rappers in the United
States, which served as a pre-interview and was recorded. The chief goal of the interview was to
89 understand what they felt were the characteristics that allowed them to connect with thousands of people consistently during each of their past performances. It was also important to understand their background, life experiences, and the individual characteristics that make them unique. The participants were then given 2 months to create a battle rap using STEM terms in a 2 vs. 2 format. This event was held to see how a crowd would react to four individuals battling on stage about STEM topics.
Directly after the performance, I conducted a post-interview with the four battle rappers in a reserved room at a local university. The goal was to gauge how they felt the performance was received, to find out if they saw themselves incorporating science into their music again, and how exactly they prepared for the performance. The post-interview was recorded.
Immediately following the post-interview, I interviewed members of the audience to understand their thoughts about what they saw. In addition to my primary data, I was able to gain secondary data from responses to social media posts about the event, I viewed all of the YouTube video comments to see how people felt about the artists incorporating science into music.
Professional Battle Rappers Data Analysis
I transcribed the pre-interview, post-interview, the performance, and audience interviews.
I then searched through the transcriptions for common themes that continued to arise. School, finances, mental stability, communication, engagement and how battle rap can affect people were the topics that came up the most through my questioning, or areas the interview may have led us into. The common themes were selected and grouped together to understand the artists, how they successfully engage different audiences, and how they went about creating STEM content
90 for an audience. The characteristics that helped battle rappers to discuss STEM content successfully seemed so promising that I decided to observe the effects of actually incorporating battle pedagogy directly into university classrooms. The themes were: Criticality about
Schooling; Financial and Mental Stability; Promotes Academic Engagement; and Develops
Effective Communication.
Battle Rappers Findings
Four themes emerged after I critically analyzed the information derived from the transcriptions of the pre-interview, post-interview, the performance, and audience interviews.
The four themes emerged from conversations about how the battle rappers come/came up with their rhymes, their feelings on academia and other topics that continued to come up in up during in the transcription process. Before I talk more about the themes, I introduce the four battle rappers and share a little about their school experiences from the pre-interview.
Part 1. The Battle Rappers and Their School Experiences
The Four Battle Rappers
The pre-interview was conducted at Teachers College in a private office with four individuals present: K-Shyne, DNA, Goodz Da Animal (Goodz), and Charlie Clips (Clips).
Although none of the battle rappers completed college, Charlie Clips did attend briefly. All the battle rappers received their high school diploma or GED over time. They mentioned remembering one or two teachers of color during their entire K-12 experience. They all felt as though battle rap had saved their lives because they are not sure what they would be doing
91 otherwise. When asked why they are so successful at battle rap, they said it was because of their unique stage presence that includes free styling, which is the spontaneous ability to be rhythmic without previous practice and incorporating punch lines, energy, and storytelling. The artists had no consistent mentors inside or outside of school who were in the science field. However, they did enjoy hands-on activities the most if they participated in class.
Clips was one of the individuals who really enjoyed hands on activities, especially within his science classes. The rest were interested in science, but he did not feel the teachers pushed them toward the field. Clips enjoyed rapping during lunch at school. He also mentioned that anyone who has a problem with battle rap, which sometimes discusses violence, should also not watch any activity that involves physical violence like boxing or football because that would be hypocritical.
Goodz stated that what he liked most about school was gym. He never considered college because of the debt he would accrue, and he did not want to go through that. His experience in public school was so terrible that he has put his daughter in private school, which he believes is more hands-on.
DNA was the least talkative of the group, although he certainly was very talkative before the cameras rolled. He mentioned he was homeschooled because he kept getting into trouble at school. He is very articulate, but unfortunately did not participate much in the group discussion.
Finally, K-Shyne felt as though the only time he was pushed toward anything in school was when he went out of his way to become close to his teacher. This is unfortunate, he said, because a student should never have to force himself or herself to fit under a potential mentor’s wing. K-Shyne wanted to pursue college but did not feel it was for him; he said school is a
92 process that provides delayed gratification, and his mind needs instant gratification. He said he got into a lot of trouble, was suspended frequently, and never felt comfortable with school.
Criticality about Schooling
Many factors contribute to learning in an academic setting (Boni, 2017). Developing a critical lens on how school operates, what learning styles work best for students, and the type of teacher/instructor that is preferable to students requires time to understand. Despite this fact, the battle rappers in this study exhibited complex knowledge about these elements of teaching. None of the battle rappers I interviewed completed college, although Charlie Clips did attend briefly.
All the battle rappers received their high school diploma or GED over time.
The battle rappers did not need postsecondary education to achieve a level of notoriety that many seldom reach. When asked what their experience was like in school, the gentlemen discussed some interesting perspectives. In relation to the teachers they had, they were not particularly fond of them because of their cultural differences, personalities, or relatability. For instance, Goodz said, “How can a teacher that hasn’t been around where I have been, or came from where I came from, relate to you and teach a lesson?” Goodz did not believe that teachers coming from outside his community could teach him. He would have preferred a teacher who could connect with him on a cultural level, which may have contributed to why when asked what his favorite class was while in school, he replied, “Gym.” Goodz was not the only one who felt cultural differences were separating him from his teacher. Charlie Clips said:
I think it really is that a lot of teachers growing up weren’t from the hood, they didn’t
understand, and it wasn’t their fault. In order for people to feel where you’re coming
93 from, they need to be able to relate. For example, if a teacher is trying to teach you two
plus two is four and you’re not getting it since your mind is somewhere else because
something may be going on at home, or from something you saw, a teacher that can relate
to you will pick up on that. Sit you to the side for a few seconds, and come back to you
because they get it. So when we rap, that’s what the crowd gets. When we “spit” it, it
feels like we just did it yesterday. We experienced it, or someone we know has been
through it. They feel it because it isn’t fake. They relate. It’s the delivery.
In this excerpt, Charlie Clips essentially shared that because his teachers could not relate to his upbringing, they were not aware of or did not care that he was not enthusiastic about how they chose to give the lesson. He added that when he raps, he makes sure people pay attentive to his speech by using voice inflection, hand movements, and passion when composing his words.
The battle rappers shared that if their teachers spoke in this manner, they would have paid more attention in class. With a lack of quality teachers, these gentlemen became the teachers they themselves had yearned for. Au (2005) essentially said that rappers are teachers: “Discourse through their lyrics, are indeed using their music to educate their listeners about the problems with education. Since rappers are working in a medium that is meant to be shared popularly, the act of rapping about the issue is, simultaneously, an act of education” (p. 215). One of the goals of this research was to understand fully how these battle rappers “teach” content in an engaging way without having completed a postsecondary degree. According to the rappers’ responses, one of the main things that factors into the composition and delivery of material for a battle or classroom session is the authenticity and relatability of the presenter. Some teachers with
94 postsecondary degrees were unable or simply chose not to encourage, engage, and enhance the lives of these battle rappers and other rappers (Jones, 2001; Rios & Jones, 2001; Wallace, 2001).
Goodz felt one of the reasons for the disconnect between their teachers and themselves was that their teachers lacked personality to attract the students. According to Goodz, “Say a teacher was like Clips or Shyne, their personalities will draw you into making you listen. Many teachers were real stiff, had their lessons planned, and just got through it.” Goodz felt the teachers he encountered did not put much effort into engaging him or making him feel a part of the lesson. Therefore, rather than go to class, he chose to spend time with friends in the hallway or outside of school during school hours. He also felt:
A lot of teachers don’t have personalities, you know. I had teachers that had no
personality at all. I couldn’t/I didn’t want to hear what they had to say. I had one good
teacher; she was a Black lady too. She had so much personality I wanted to hear what she
had to say, so when she was teaching, she was like you take this and do this and like, I
wanted to hear what she had to say. A lot of teachers go up there like he said and just
stand. But no like he said a lot of teachers don’t have personalities they just go up there
and teach. They don’t have the love to teach. You know what I’m saying, they stand up
there and that’s what they give off.
Goodz had one good experience from a teacher, but the rest did not have the type of personality that resonated with him. According to Kahn (2016), “personality is a key component or aspect of professional attitude of a teacher having a significant impact upon the student’s academics” (p. 78). Personality was not the only aspect these battle rappers felt teachers lacked
95 when trying to relay information to them. Relatability was also a major issue, according to T-
Top. When asked why teachers are not engaging urban youth of color, T-Top stated:
It’s a relatability problem. They [the audience] can relate to us more than a normal
teacher. Like I was saying earlier they give it to you like a textbook, you know what I’m
saying…they reading it to you and want it to stick with you. They’re not giving you
different metaphors that, you know, that you might be familiar with, that might register
with you. that’s how I had to learn.
T-Top did not appreciate the lack of effort teachers put in to keep him engaged. For T-
Top, metaphors were one way teachers could have held his attention. According to Sfard (2014), metaphors are important in learning. Successful programs like Science Genius help shed light on what incorporating metaphors into academia can do for student morale (Adjapong & Emdin,
2016).
Another area that affects some students is how long it takes to graduate from high school to begin earning an income (Fallis & Opotow, 2003). K-Shyne discussed how school affected his earning ability when he shared: “I was an instant gratification type of person, so I didn’t want to wait for the long ride, and I needed what I wanted then and there. There were other ways I could get it.” K-Shyne wanted to get in a position where he could earn an income and be a provider as soon as possible, and he felt there were ways he could make money in a quicker and easier way than the hurdles it would take to graduate high school and find a job. Emdin (personal communication, January 31, 2018) argues that it is brave of Black and Brown youth to drop out of school when they recognize school is not helping them the way they need, and when they feel
96 damage being done to their mind by their culture not being fully accepted within the academic space. Some people underestimate the trauma imparted on Black and Brown in the education space (Ginwright, 2016). Whether individuals choose to attend school, it is important for people to earn an income to provide for their family, and some individuals turn to battle rap to provide that income.
Financial and Mental Stability
Charlie Clips uses battle rap to provide for his family. According to Clips, “Battle rap saves lives. For real the money that it puts in our pocket, the fan base the interview that we doing here to be able to get ready and talk to the students. I don’t think people understand how it is to be on television and all that. I mean BET, MTV, you name it.” Not only does battle rap provide him with a stable income, but it provides him with a platform to spread his message—a message that may be a form of therapy for himself and even others through his words (Short, 2013). When asked if battle rap is therapeutic, Clips replied:
Absolutely, it shows what you are going through, depending on what you’re going
through, music can fix you, so I assume that for people our battle rap speaks for them as
well. You may not be going through something, but just the aggression that we display or
the line you could relate to it.
Receiving some form of therapy is essential for students and teachers (Short, 2013). Also, being surrounded by people who are expressing themselves helps other people feel more comfortable expressing themselves, even if they cannot relate directly to what someone is going
97 through (Parkinson, 2011). According to K-Shyne: “You might not be going through what the person is going through, but the delivery is like, damn, man, I feel his pain. It’s about the way you present it to someone and the way you deliver it.” Along with battle rap being a space where one can have empathy and be therapeutic, Charlie Clips argued that battle rap events are safer than going to some other events:
So if you pay attention to the art form there’s no difference if we’re mimes and make a
gun symbol and do these type of things, we are doing poetry and you have somebody and
they saying Black brother shot down in the hood for…you get what I’m saying? What
makes it so different is that I think our demeanor our looks the crowd everybody rowdy.
I’ve noticed something, out of three thousand battles that have taken place so far, only
four incidents where violence really happened. I will take that any day but let’s talk about
how many parties were shot up. Let’s talk about how many clubs. Sporting events, things
happen. Sneaker drops, baby showers, but in our world, there’s only be like four incidents
that you can honestly really name.
Clips shared a powerful message here, saying that although battle rap discusses violence, discussing it helps young men not act out their thoughts as they are verbalizing them to others.
Also sharing that if someone does not like battle rap due to the violence, how can one then condone sports like hockey, where athletes are legally allowed to fight each other during the match? People also condone boxing and football, both of which can lead to severe brain problems (Rabadi & Jordan, 2001). If we allow students to feel safe while expressing themselves through battle pedagogy, maybe there will be less violence in educational spaces (Leonardo &
98 Porter, 2010). Another area in which battle pedagogy can potentially help is bringing different cultures together in a society with so much racial divide (Jenks, Lee, & Kanpol, 2001).
When asked if incorporating science in battle rap would work in a middle school in
Nebraska, Clips replied:
There was kids in that crowd that were going crazy. There were children and when you
think about the whole White race if that’s what you’re referring to, when you really think
about that they all listening to dudes that’s here now. They are at the concerts more than
us; they hip to everything that’s going on. So as you said the middle school in Nebraska
we can go there and turn up. So I believe that we can do that and God bless we were able
to shake the room with children to elderly people in that room.
According to Clips, battle rap and hip-hop music in general work for urban youth of color and even White people, based on the fact that White people frequent battle rap events and hip- hop concerts. Not only could battle pedagogy help connect races while discussing STEM content, but battle pedagogy could also bridge the divide between different generations
(Gadsden, 2008). If we create spaces where individuals of different ages and different cultures can interact while learning, communities will have more cohesion and understanding with the individuals involved (Wilson, 2013). Individuals who have an opportunity to connect with one another or develop a relationship can pass information quickly (Kram & Isabella, 1985).
Therefore, since one of the places people are mandated to be by law is school at an early age
(Marmot, Friel, Bell, Houweling, & Taylor 2008), if we can develop teachers to express
99 themselves better, students may also become better at expressing themselves. This improvement in daily teacher-student interactions can improve academic engagement in the classroom.
Promotes Academic Engagement
Engagement in academia is key to learning (Aranguren, Larrea, & Wilson, 2012).
According to DNA, several characteristics are involved in keeping people engaged in what one is saying. When asked what characteristics are involved in keeping people engaged in his battles, he shared: “We all make the crowd gravitate to us for different reasons. Me, because I can freestyle and I get hyped, Goodz for his charisma, Clips has his presence and character, and
Shyne for his performance and energy. We all are masters of making the crowd go crazy.” From what DNA shared, being able to freestyle, get hyped, and have charisma, presence, character, performance, and energy are important for keeping people engaged in the information one is trying to relay. To freestyle means to verbalize content on the spot without being properly prepared (Medvec, Madey, & Gilovich, 1995). Hype is the ability to go from normal to excited quickly (Linden & Fenn, 2003). Charisma is the ability to have a way with words. Presence is the ability of an individual to command attention (Pillai & Meindl, 2005). Character is the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual (Bowden, 1926). Performance is one’s ability to put together a memorable show of artistic ability (Brackett, Rivers, Shiffman, Lerner, & Salovey,
2006). Energy is the capacity of acting or being active, according to Merriam-Webster (n.d.).
When some Black and Brown individuals use this term, they refer to energy as the type of vibes someone gives off, whether through a verbal or physical exchange.
100 During their performance at Teachers College, Columbia University, the battle rappers incorporated these characteristics in front of students, teachers, and parents. All these individuals in attendance could be observed clapping, cheering, nodding, and encouraging the gentlemen to continue. All these actions were indications that the individuals listening were engaged (Billet,
2001), which in turn could indicate that aspects of battle rap could be an effective method of interacting with students. I argue if more teachers were to incorporate these characteristics into their practices, more students would be engaged in the classroom. A teacher who attended the battle rappers’ performance and was interviewed directly after the performance shared: “I loved how they incorporated science and hip-hop, that was very dope. That makes science really cool and I love it. I think they should teach science like that all across the board. Honestly, I was inspired today.” Another teacher who was interviewed directly after the performance shared:
Teachers are not trained to do that. Most of them are from different backgrounds. They
are not innovative in reference to trying things they are not used to. There are only a
handful of people that will get out of their comfort zone to explore different strategies and
techniques that will help kids succeed especially in science which is a tough medium for
a lot of teachers. So as younger teachers coming into the field, they are bringing this
culture with them involving hip-hop which is accepted but a lot of teachers are still doing
the old ways. The biggest challenge is trying to get our students to become successful and
succeed in science.
Both teachers felt that incorporating aspects of battle rap in STEM can assist with learning in the classroom simply because it is new and cool and involves hip-hop.
101 Some teachers have had success incorporating hip-hop into their classroom (Ladson-
Billings, 2014). Some teachers have also incorporated mnemonics into their lessons to help their students recall information through forms of rhythm and rhyme (Hayes, 2009). K-Shyne shared:
“When I was in about the second or third grade, I had trouble with my multiplication although I was good at math. They had songs for the times tables to learn them and that’s how I actually learned them.” Songs generated to assist in STEAM learning helped K-Shyne in school. Perhaps if more teachers incorporated aspects of music into their lessons, more students would pick up the material. According to Modood and May (2001), urban youth of color are being outperformed by White and Asian students. If urban youth of color had teachers who were equipped to execute a variety of strategies to help students learn, their grades would improve.
Battle pedagogy can be one of the tools that teachers implement to assist with learning.
According to Charlie Clips, battle rap in the classroom is what the education system is missing. He shared:
I’m very sure education should always be fun. Should always just be fun, always. You go
to school you know you gotta think about how many hours you’re in there. It’s a job
really when you think about it. When you in school as a kid it’s a job. Think about it, you
need a lunch break. You get a lunch break you get what I’m saying, lunch break and
recess, but it’s like a job, you know, kids don’t wanna be there, from kids to college
students you know we just display our work in front of. Even though you in college,
technically you don’t wanna be there. You get what I’m saying. We all can get our
degrees and just bounce. Everybody will do that. But you gotta go through the course,
you gotta go to the classroom so I just think that it should always be fun. I think battle rap
102 made it so much fun as you’ve seen—putting neutrons, electrons, and organs in different
ways is like, oh, that’s how you do it—that’s how—you get what I’m saying. Nobody
wants to hear turn the page to page 92—you know what I’m saying?
Clips went on to share that innovations like battle rap do not typically occur in academia because teachers are nervous to try something new to maintain student interest. Conversely, battle rappers are willing to try new things to win an audience over, disclosing a difference between battle rappers and the typical teacher. Clips went on to share:
Some of them are just there to do a job. When you are just there to do a job, you’re not
gonna experiment, and that’s what this is. This is an experiment when you start to think
about it. It can fail. It could have failed bad. Like there could have been parents in there
like: “Oh my god, you got these hooligans on stage rapping,” but everybody in there from
the lady in the wheelchair, to the little girl in the front to another kid, they almost wanted
to give a standing ovation.
Teachers must be willing to be more innovative to allow students the opportunity to become engaged in the lessons they teach (Reeve, 2006). Along with being innovative, teachers must also ensure that while implementing new learning techniques, the delivery of the material is being shared in a manner that students want to continue to hear more of rather than lose interest in (Boardman, Argüelles, Vaughn, Hughes, & Klingner, 2005).
103 Develops Effective Communication
Effective communication is a skill that comes from practice (Kalla, 2005). Teachers should be able to tailor information to each student in a way that students can receive it
(Ottenbreit-Leftwich, Glazewski, Newby, & Ertmer, 2010). Improving teachers’ communication can improve students’ grades (Matthew, Kraft, Shaun, & Dougherty, 2013). Goodz was asked why teachers with so much content knowledge have trouble delivering it, while the battle rappers went on stage and delivered STEM content with ease. Goodz replied:
I think when you rapping and you have to make a story rhyme; it’s hard than just going
up there and talking. So that wasn’t that difficult for us because we know how to make
things make sense and make it rhyme, period. So, if we had to go up there and just talk, it
would be so easy for us because of what we do. I think if we do poetry or rap anything
with words, you gotta read and thinking. Anything with words just make it easier to talk.
Goodz essentially shared that because he has mastered the ability to rap, talking about a topic is simple to him. Perhaps if more teachers learned more aspects of battle pedagogy, which includes making rhymes and delivering content in an exciting and engaging way, maybe battle pedagogy could improve the communication of the teachers and, thus, the education system, as many U.S. students are not learning as much as students in other countries (OECD, 2016).
Many U.S. students are from different countries or share a different culture than the majority American culture. Therefore, if one is teaching in front of a diverse audience, it is important to understand concepts that may assist students to understand one’s perspective.
According to DNA, “You gotta really know who you’re in front of, once you know the audience
104 that you’re gonna be in front of, you know what to talk about.” T-Top became excited when he found out the location of the performance was going to be Harlem. According to T-Top, “No matter how much they tell me this is an Ivy League school, I said, Oh, this is Harlem, I can talk then, I can talk. So you just gotta relate to where you at.” T-Top felt where he has lived is similar to Harlem in culture and so felt comfortable in not drastically altering his typical ways of interacting with an audience.
Goodz agreed that a shared culture makes communication easier; he also shared the importance of making information relatable to the individual because making anything relatable involves knowing how to do it. As he said, “Anybody that has personality can make something relatable.” Personality indeed has been said to be key in communicating with individuals
(McKenna & Bargh, 2000). K-Shyne added that another important aspect in communication is clarity: “For me when I attack something, I want my point to be taken clearly. I won’t leave until you understand. The way I’m going to present it to you is like you have no choice until you see what I am talking about. In my era of school, the teacher would just have their lessons prepared, whether you got it or not.” K-Shyne shared that he wished his teachers would have attempted to explain concepts to him until he understood the material. Because he appreciates efforts during interactions with people, he ensures that people fully comprehend his thought process before their communication is finished. Even when he is competing against another, he does research about the person’s name and background and puts it in his battle so people understand the relevance of his choice of words. As K-Shyne shared, “Once you get a topic, you just have to make it make sense with whoever your opponent is. For example, if the guy’s name is ‘Star,’ you would think about the planets.”
105 Another important concept in communication is the ability not to react violently to what someone else has to say. Battle rappers have been known to say some disrespectful things to one another, and fighting is strictly prohibited. K-Shyne shared, “For someone to say some of the hardest things you’ve ever heard in your like to you and be able to shake their hands after, that is like, that shows you.” Battle rap helps people improve their composure during their interactions with others. If someone says something hurtful or distasteful during a battle rap event, one must wait a turn to speak and compete in the match in a composed way. If not, the rapper will be suspended from participating in battle rap events, thereby affecting one’s pay and losing one’s fan base. The composure necessary to complete can be a valuable tool for improving an individual’s self-control. By contrast, the lack of self-control can lead to an individual making rash decisions that may harm self or others (Baumeister & Heatherton, 1996). Self-control thus is important in communication (Lyczynski & Hanley, 2013). Other areas that are also important in communication are nonverbal cues, tones, and mannerisms (Phutela, 2015). Understanding what may trigger a group when communicating is essential to one’s craft (Gay & Kirkland, 2003).
Adaptation as well is necessary for survival in any genre (Thieringer, Jones, & Inouye,
1998). DJs should not be behind a curtain, unable to see the crowd’s reaction to the music they are playing, just as chefs should not prepare meals without knowing the customers’ allergies or doctors should not prescribe medications without knowing the patients’ symptoms. Clearly, certain occupations must respond to the needs of the client, and teaching should be no different.
Teachers adding battle pedagogy to their curriculum can enhance the skills they have perfected, not diminish their beliefs. Battle pedagogy is a method to be employed, especially to assist with engaging students in the hope of retaining them in STEAM disciplines.
106 Part 2. The Battle Rappers Performance
Unexpected Event
One week before the event took place, K-Shyne got arrested, and we were not sure if he would be out in time for the show. I did not want to take any chances that the battle rappers would be unable to perform the science-themed rhymes, so DNA contacted T-Top, a professional battle rapper featured on BET, Sprite, Smack URL, and many other venues. He agreed to perform during the show and met with DNA just 2 days before the event to practice. These artists orally attacked each other on a personal level using their names, other facts, and fiction. This meant that the rhymes the battle rappers initially created needed to be altered to conform to T-
Top’s presence. In short, all the artists needed to reconstruct parts of their rhymes to make them relevant to the individuals they were facing.
The Battle
The battle itself was amazing from beginning to end. The crowd received the artists with open arms. There was “ohs,” “ahs,” and laughter throughout the performance, as noted in my observations as well as what the artists shared afterwards. They discussed various science topics in Physics, Biology, and Chemistry. They also referenced drugs, money, and guns to drive across their points. The combination of the two worlds suited the urban audience. After the performance, several people came up to the artists and asked to take pictures with them. Some even wanted to interview them after the show, while others wanted to make their rapping about science into a show; still others simply wanted to rap to these men of color to whom they looked up admiringly.
107 After the Battle Performance
The post-interview took place in a room about 30 feet from the performance space. Here, the four artists discussed how they prepared for the performance. Goodz mentioned the importance of using metaphors when describing topics as a means of preparation and comprehending the material. Clips said it was easy for him to understand science because it was just like dissecting a Nigga. They understood the importance of metaphors; they said they simply thought about what they wanted to say, then used the science material to figure out a format that would allow for the most comprehension.
T-Top felt the reason why some teachers do not receive the same reaction from their student audience is because the teachers do not make the material relatable enough. Clips said school should be fun and teachers should be willing to experiment, but they do not want to risk their jobs or are too afraid to mess up. Clips felt this experiment using battle rappers to educate went well. He also felt if the event had been performed before a majority White audience, it would have done well also. He shared that mainly White people are at Black concerts possibly because they can afford the tickets.
Goodz felt that some teachers lack personality. He mentioned that he used to listen when his teachers had a good personality and he recognized when they were just there to do a job. He did feel the audience was receptive to them and may have even been better than crowds who were readily familiar with him, like a URL or RBE crowd. Moreover, the crowd may have been so enthusiastic because of the great introduction that Dr. Emdin gave. This led me to wonder if teachers should be introduced by someone important instead of asking students to simply take
108 the teachers’ word for who they are or checking reputations on Google. Goodz shared that science battle rap worked well with this audience and could also work in the classroom.
DNA shared that the battle rappers have not focused on science in their past battles because they tried to accommodate the audience they were facing.
During the post-interview, while T-Top was talking, Clips cut him off to alert him that he may have said something homosexual. In urban youth culture, men quickly inform others if they implied a homosexual connotation, even if the individual did not mean what was said in that way. Shortly after the incident of homosexuality, I was asked why I contacted Goodz about doing a science battle rap. I shared that I got tired of feeling alone, so I called Goodz. At that moment,
Clips and Goodz said “no homo” and began making jokes, which in the urban youth culture is common. During that exchange, the owner of 15 Minutes of Fame who was recording interjected, telling them to stop being childish and interrupting people with talk of homosexuality; he suggested letting people speak freely.
Battle Rappers Discussion
The methodology of battle rap is effective because it improves content retention among students. Content retention is accomplished by teachers creating platforms for students to break down complex material by allowing a free flow of ideas. According to DNA, teachers should have the ability to freestyle, get hyped, and have charisma, character, performance, and energy.
These techniques are necessary skills to ensure memorable interactions with students and the free flow of ideas. Teachers not only need to be cognizant of what they are teaching, but also who is being taught. Other ways that battle rap is an effective method of interacting with students is the
109 fact that it is still evolving. Battle rap has gone from being a competition on local street corners to gaining world recognition. Battle rap accomplished this feat by adjusting to the different ways people have received information. Shifting it is a typical male vs. male competition, to two males vs. two males or males vs. females, in addition to creating an app and having different leagues.
The reason battle rap has become so pervasive and influential in some communities is because of its ability to adapt over time. As noted above, adaptation is necessary for survival in any genre (Thieringer et al., 1998). Unfortunately, the education system has not adapted its teaching methods to reflect American diversity (Ladson-Billings, 1999). Education should be ever-changing. If battle pedagogy was incorporated into the education system, battle pedagogy would assist with keeping the curriculum updated with subtle changes within cultural norms.
According to Sieck (2019) “Cultural norms are the standards we live by. They are the shared expectations and rules that guide behavior of people within social groups. Cultural norms are learned and reinforced from parents, friends, teachers and others while growing up in a society” (p. ??).
Battle rappers can engage students while using science content because they are making science fun. According to Charlie Clips, fun is missing in the education system. The battle rappers who participated in this study did not have an enjoyable experience in their range of education, from Kindergarten through high school—a time that Drew (2011) of The New York
Times stated is when most students have the most fun. As Drew said:
Middle and high school students are having most of the fun, building their erector sets
and dropping eggs into water to test the first law of motion. The excitement quickly
110 fades as students brush up against the reality of what David E. Goldberg, an emeritus
engineering professor, calls “the math-science death march.” Freshmen in college wade
through a blizzard of calculus, physics and chemistry in lecture halls with hundreds of
other students. And then many wash out.
If these battle rappers did not enjoy middle and high school classes, a time that should have been fun but only gets more difficult, according to Goldberg, then how can students actually be expected to continue what they do not enjoy? Or could it be that students do not enjoy the person teaching them the material? According to Kearney, Plax, Hays, and Ivey (2011) who interviewed college students about their teachers’ performance, students shared that many teachers have negative qualities, including talking without enthusiasm about the material, speaking in a monotone, enunciating poorly, and talking too loudly or softly. Given that 80% of teachers are White, it is a high probability that the students who were interviewed were referring to White teachers. According to Gates (1988), Black people speak differently than White people:
A distinct difference between Black rhetoric and what we might call White rhetoric is the
typical relationship between speaker and audience. In most White speech interactions, as
in traditional classical rhetoric, the speaker speaks and the audience listens; in Black
speech interactions, the audience responds almost constantly, with set responses,
encouragement, suggestions, and nonverbal signals. Indeed, Black discourse encourages
such participation. Black discourse is (to borrow a term from Mikhail Bakhtin [p. 1206])
highly “dialogic.” Successful performance stimulates and can be measured by audience
responses. (p. 1546)
111 Because most battle rappers are Black, they naturally talk in a way that creates a space for their audience to participate. Participation allows people to feel involved in the learning process, in this case making science more enjoyable. Along with participation, battle rappers incorporate style, timing to allow their audience to absorb the material, call-and-response techniques, and even talking with hands to make sure people fully comprehend their message.
These methods of communication can be considered a form of active learning (McConnell, Steer,
& Owens, 2003). When active learning methods were compared to typical lectures through students’ grades, it was found that students received higher grades when active learning was incorporated into the course (Freeman et al., 2014). Typical lectures are taught by typical teachers, who do not incorporate the techniques that battle rappers use to engage individuals. If teachers were to add these techniques to their lectures, the lectures may be more engaging, and both the battle rappers and interviewees of this study have attested.
Battle Pedagogy
The battle rappers understand how to be good teachers because they understand what they themselves were missing in their classrooms. Therefore, when they go on stage, it is almost as if it becomes their classroom. Throughout their lives, these artists have performed in front of millions throughout their lives, and the crowds love their performance, driving them to continue performing (Green, 2006). These artists never went to school for this type of knowledge; rather, it seems to be innate. I argue that because they were not in school when everyone else was, they had more time to practice socializing with others (Gottman, Gonso, Rasmussen, 1975).
Socializing is important for helping people to recognize others’ body language, facial
112 expressions, and levels of interaction (Gottman, Gonso, Rasmussen, 1975). A good orator can sense when the audience is disconnected and can easily gain back its favor by shifting techniques
(Ong, 1975). The problem lies with those who do not pick up cues that an audience is no longer with them. If an audience of students is not paying attention to the teacher, that audience may miss some information that is being taught.
Teachers at all grade levels should attend more teacher development trainings, and more courses on engagement should be taught while preservice teachers are still in school (Begeny &
Martens, 2006). One of those trainings should be on Battle pedagogy. Battle pedagogy incorporates aspects of battle rap into the science classroom. Some of those aspects are energy, performance, hype, character, presence, charisma, and the ability to freestyle, as explained in the above discussion. Teachers can use these techniques to interact with their students through authentic oral communication, body language, hand clapping, and even head nods. Battle pedagogy should be used as a tool to assist in engaging students in the course content. Teachers must understand which principle of battle pedagogy fits their personality the best and apply it while giving their lesson. Not every teacher will understand how to freestyle, but maybe having charisma during one’s lesson may works better. The ultimate goal is to ensure that teachers understand that students should not consistently receive passive information. Learning should be an active process that allows the teacher to assist the learner in understanding information in a format they will be able to internalize, utilize and access when the individual may want to retrieve that content (Blumenfeld, Soloway, Marx, Krajcik, Guzdial, Palincsar, 1991). Battle pedagogy encourages audience participation so the students feel they are part of the learning process, can access parts of their knowledge to comprehend the material, and will remain
113 attentive enough to store the content they encounter. Students having the opportunity to build upon their memory and interact with their professors makes battle pedagogy a constructivist approach.
Constructivism uses a student’s inherent knowledge, prompts, cues, questions, direct explanations, and modeling to guide student thought and facilitate an increased responsibility for the completion of a task (Fisher & Frey, 2010). Battle pedagogy employs a constructivist approach, and also embodies being an intellectual warrior. According to Kincheloe (2006), an intellectual warrior is someone willing to sacrifice positionality in order to improve something in which they believe, even if it involves ridicule or banishment (Kincheloe, 2006). The battle rappers who shared their knowledge about how they engage their audience, created science content and performed a science battle rap are intellectual warriors. They did not know how their fans would receive them producing science content. When some individuals try something new that may be out of the norm, sometimes they are shunned and made to feel bad for not sticking to what they are known for, possibly costing them their fan base and revenue. Yet the battle rappers continued any way, and the science content was received with love by teachers, students and fans of battle rap. The methods used by the battle rappers to engage an audience is effective based on their fans willingness to continue attending their events, regularly participation as an audience, and increasing YouTube viewings. My goal, then, was to introduce the ability to maintain an audience’s attention to all teachers.
Another way a teacher can keep students' attention is by having an idea about what goes on in the students’ communities. Teachers living within close proximity to the school they teach, or among the students they teach can improve the students learning ability (Banks, Cookson,
114 Hawley, Nieto, Schofield & Stephan, 2001). Similarly, those who police an area, should also reside in the area they police (Brown & Benedict, 2002). When someone from outside the community tries to impose authority over those residents of that community, resentment and miscommunication can occur. This energy can lead to a negative motivational state, which discourages mental growth. Equally important to consider is that some residents who feel their mental growth is being stunted due to authoritarians ruling over their community cannot afford to move from that area or enroll their kids in a different school (Graubard, 1972). Moreover, without unity among disenfranchised people, calls for a better education system in certain communities go unanswered (Shields & Seltzer, 1997). For some, the education system is an individual’s only hope for escaping poverty. Many operating under the assumption that earning money will be easier if they complete school (Dorn, 1993). With the demand for STEM jobs increasing (Wyss, Heulskamp & Siebert, 2012), ensuring students qualify for these positions should in fact, be the nation’s top priority.
Conclusion
Science is everyday life (Cajas,1999). It is a part of our biology, our environment, and the air we breathe. It is integrated into the engineering of the devices that we rely on daily, such as our iPads, cellphones, and computers. Thus, science education should develop critical thinking, problem-solving skills, and decision-making ability (Gunn, Grigg & Pomahac, 2008). These pivotal skills are necessary not only within a classroom, but outside of one as well. Given this reality, why are Black and Brown youth struggling to learn the scientific concepts and skills that make up everyday life (Barton & Tan, 2010)? The truth is that most of our urban city youth are
115 failing science (Rahm, 2007). Poverty, illiteracy, and even the lack of training for educators contribute to this problem (Ameen, Gorman, 2009). One of the key issues is that the language in which the subject is being taught to the youth is not resonating with them, leading them to resist learning the subject (Carless, 2012). How can this change?
Generations of people—not just youth—have missed out on what science is all about.
Without science, people will not understand food ingredients, do simple math, and potentially create new inventions to make society better (D'Ambrosio, 2001). Having a foundation in science leads individuals to innovations and creativity, allowing them to make residual income for themselves and their families for generations to come (Bhalla, 2010).
Many individuals in urban communities lack a strong background in science and miss its benefits (Conrad & Hilchey, 2011). No one encourages them to pursue science fields, even in school settings (Conrad & Hilchey, 2011). Thus, it is not surprising that there is little interest in
STEAM topics and students continue to lose interest in these courses. It may also be a reason why many musicians do not incorporate science into their music since music stems from and informs one’s culture and experiences. If no one is discussing science in school or other venues, many will feel science is of no value to them.
When I met with the battle rappers, I honestly had no idea what to expect. Shortly after our interaction, I found out Goodz Da Animal had spoken at a middle school about the art of putting a battle rap together. I reviewed his social media for the past 5 years to see if he had done that before, and I did not see a single occurrence of him interacting with kids at a school to educate them. From the outside looking in it may appear that after interacting with an academic like myself, Goodz felt more inspired to understand that he has a voice in the academic setting. I
116 found out he had met with the middle schoolers through a Black engineer named Trevor, whom I have known for some time. Trevor sending me that message strengthened our bond—that is, two
Black scientists feel even more connected and a battle rapper now feels more connected to academics, all because of hip-hop. Despite all of our negative school experiences, our bond has made it more comfortable for us to discuss what is wrong in our schools, and allows us to understand what we want to change, so that no other child or adolescent has to go through what we did.
The battle rappers who participated in this study, as Clips put it, are poets and, in my opinion, can relate to anyone. For example, I shared with DNA that while going to school, I could not relate to the professors because they were all White, 40 years older than I was, and did not really accept me. I also shared that I could not relate to people from my neighborhood because I was a business owner and working on my doctorate—both of which people from my neighborhood typically do not do. DNA shared he also feels caught in the middle. While he is more famous than some average rapper on the corner, the music industry will not sign him to a contract because the music industry does not know how to market battle rappers at this time.
Interestingly, talking with DNA, I felt we both understood what it was like to feel undervalued in one’s craft. That conversation helped me realize—if I did not already—that teachers and rappers share much in common. If they spent more time around each other, perhaps they would realize they are more similar than they think.
117 Chapter V
ENGAGING UNDERGRADUATE SCIENCE STUDENTS THROUGH HIP-HOP:
BATTLE RAP AS REVOLUTIONARY SCIENCE INSTRUCTION
Abstract
Through an exploration of hip-hop as a viable method for science instruction, and battle rap as a tool of hip-hop pedagogy, this study explored the use of battle rap in undergraduate cell biology, anatomy, and physiology courses. This research attempted to demonstrate the benefits of hip-hop in undergraduate instruction in science – as a mechanism for increasing science content knowledge, sharing students’ emotional state/well-being, and improving students’ overall engagement in the discipline.
Keywords: Battle Rap, STEM, Science Education, Post-Secondary STEM Education, Hip-hop
Introduction
A 2012 report by the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology
(PCAST) predicted that the U.S. workforce will suffer a deficit of one million college graduates in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) over the next decade. The report called for addressing the shortfall by increasing the retention of college students in STEM. While many have cited this call, many academic leaders have not responded aggressively to workforce needs by implementing measures that increase retention. Some of this inaction is likely due to the lack of knowledge about proven retention strategies.
118 Persistence of more top students would address the projected STEM workforce deficit, while building a deeper, broader talent pool (PCAST, 2012). Less than half of the three million students who enter U.S. colleges yearly intending to major in a STEM field persist in STEM until graduation (PCAST, 2012). Black and Brown post-secondary students declare STEM as a major at the same rate as their white counterparts ((Xie, Fang, & Shauman, 2015). The exit rate is especially high for the so-called “underrepresented majority”—women, racial, and ethnic minorities who are underrepresented in STEM majors but collectively make up 68% of college students in the United States (Seymour & Hewitt, 1997). For example, African American students who intend to major in STEM switch to a non-STEM field before graduation twice as often as White students (National Academy of Science, 2011). Students can be retained in the
STEM field, one way of doing that is by acknowledging students different ways of receiving information.
Students learn in different ways (Garfield,1995). There are currently many challenges concerning how students learn old concepts in a new day of receiving content. Battle pedagogy provides opportunities among educators within the science setting to allow their students to learn science concepts through arts and music. Battle pedagogy as a learning tool hopes to improve the way students and teachers both present and receive information with the hope that alternative forms of sound waves can induce enhanced connectivity to the brain. An initial study inquiring how battle rappers engage an audience through science content was done to serve three main purposes: first, to scratch beneath the surface of battle pedagogy as a teaching method and determine where the potential for it lies within the classroom setting; second, what future this
119 new teaching method holds for the science profession; and third, to determine if battle pedagogy as a practice can keep up with students’ learning needs.
Teachers typically rely on lectures and power points to teach students. It is believed that this method is no longer effective. Many students are dropping out of school due to the loss of interest (Davis & Dupper, 2004). As Davis and Dupper stated, “the most overlooked school factors is the quality of the relationship between teachers and students, especially at-risk students and the powerful impact of teacher attitudes and beliefs on student success” (p. 179). One of the causes of this division is the lack of effective teaching activities that will grasp students’ attention and motivate them to continue learning (Middleton & Spanias, 1999). New developments in science, along with the complexity of science as a subject, should encourage academics to make the learning process as fun and clear as possible (DeBoer, 2000).
The purpose of this research was to discover the benefits of incorporating arts and music
(battle rap) into the science classroom, and to determine its impact on postsecondary students’ ability to learn while remaining engaged. This study attempted to address the cardinal issue on the minds of education leaders and the STEM community, which is, what can encourage students to become more engaged in the classroom, how could that process be facilitated, and how does it differ from the current education system?
Conceptual Framework
This study is rooted in a sociocultural framework that explores the concepts of social capital and being an intellectual warrior as they relate to the experiences of youth within a STEM classroom. I draw insight from Bourdieu (2011), who highlighted capital and its varied forms as
120 important for articulating ways humans exist on a global scale. Specifically, I focus on the forms of capital that are acquired in social settings like authentic science spaces where individuals develop a conscious or unconscious personal investment in an activity or process through participating and engaging in the same experiences as peers in science-related fields. According to Adjapong (2017) Hip-hop is a form of cultural capital that many Black and Brown youth possess. When Hip-hop is brought into STEM classrooms, and used as a viable form of knowledge acquisition in science, Hip-Hop can be used to expand youth cultural capital to include science. Battle rap is a form of Hip-Hop. Students participating in science battle raps in this study gain “cultural capital,” which in its embodied state, is both inherited and acquired as one engages with either new or familiar experiences. I argue that through participating in dialogue with others, science students will gain a new form of cultural capital that they did not have access to at their school or in any other space. I suggest that students gain forms of cultural capital in the authentic science space ultimately by navigating and working in this new space.
They can then use these new forms of capital to successfully navigate future science spaces more comfortably, if they choose to. In other words, by participating in science battle raps and gaining various forms of cultural capital, students are able to view themselves as scientists and learn how to successfully navigate science spaces. Over time, students have the opportunity to acquire new forms of science content knowledge through navigating authentic science spaces. In addition, the ease with which they engage in, and gain capital within, new science spaces (such as classrooms, science labs, or other science jobs) is increased as a result of their initial engagement with science battle raps.
121 Kincheloe (2006) suggests that changes need to be made against the status quo within the education space and brave men and women must take up the fight. These individuals who work toward creating a new learning environment should be considered intellectual warriors.
Monchiski (2011) agrees and defines an intellectual warrior as an individual who despite potentially receiving backlash from those who do not agree with another for receiving an education and being viewed as a sell out, decide to pursue an education anyway because it may improve their socio economic status. Staying in school can be considered difficult, for these same students to now incorporate something as common place in society as hip-hop Bascunan
(2016), and try to appear “normal,” can open them up to criticism. The science students who participated in this study are intellectual warriors because despite not participating in a science battle rap before, they embarked in this space and rhymed to each other allowing for peer learning to occur. Tighe (1971) described peer learning as:
Creative dialogue has at its root the tenet that students are possessed with a great
potential to create, that in order for learning students to create they must also exchange,
and that the present lecture system used in most undergraduate courses stifles creativity
and exchange. (p. 21)
This statement by Tighe encourages peer learning based on how much students can benefit from creative dialogue with one another.
122 Research Questions
1. How can battle rap improve engagement within STEM courses?
2. What ways can battle rap assist in learning STEM content?
3. Are there benefits of incorporating battle rap in academic spaces outside of learning
the material for that course?
Methods
Setting
Over the course of 1 year (2018-2019), I studied students at a 4-year post-secondary institution in New York City. The demographics of the undergraduate students at the institution were 59% White, 14% Latinx, 10% Asian, 4% Black or African American, and 17% Other.
Students in four different 14-week biology courses were studied: 2 Cell Biology courses in the
Fall of 2018, 1 Anatomy and 1 Physiology course in the Fall of 2019.
Cell Biology (3 credits) - Presents central standards of cell structure and function essential to a comprehension of cell connections in the development, support, and generation of multicellular life forms. Distortions of cell structure and function that add to human infection are examined widely.
Anatomy Lab (2 credits) - A lab-based course utilizing models, microscopes, and dissections in order to think about the structure of the significant organ frameworks of the human body.
Physiology Lab (2 credits) - A lab-based course showing principles of the human nervous, cardiovascular, respiratory, and urinary systems. Overview of human life structures and histology. A tutorial on instrumentation and methodology utilized in medication.
123 These courses were selected for study because they are prerequisite courses to become a science researcher, health professional, or medical doctor. Disch (2012) showed that society’s health is based on these professionals’ ability to share measures effectively that can lead to individuals in society living longer, healthier lives. Giving students the opportunity to express themselves in class among their peers through battle rap is an opportunity for them to not only practice their communication skills but keep them engaged, while also showing mastery of the content.
Table 2.
Biology Courses Studied
End-of-Semester Who Could Form of Arts Number of Semester Course Presentation Attend Incorporated Students Fall Cell Biology Both Cell Biology Faculty, Art and 18 classes presented in an Friends, Battle Rap auditorium outside of Students 5 males class time 13 females Fall Cell Biology Both Cell Biology Faculty, Art and 17 classes presented in an Friends, Battle Rap auditorium outside of Students 6 males class time 11 females Spring Anatomy Performed for class Faculty, Battle Rap 16 only Friends, Students 4 males 12 females Spring Physiology Performed for class Faculty, Battle Rap 13 only Friends, Students 1 male 12 females
124 Student Participants
Students ranged from sophomores to seniors and their ages ranged from 19 to 23. Some students who earned their bachelor’s degrees also took some of the courses as prerequisites for a second degree, and their ages ranged from 24 to 33. The students who took the courses majored in Biology, Nursing, or Health. This was also the first time the students created STEM rhymes and battle rapped in a postsecondary course.
Table 3 presents the coded students’ names, majors, and years in school who were purposively selected to contribute information to this study.
125 Table 3.
Student Participants
Student Pseudonym Major Year Arma Biology Sophomore Bilal Biology (Pre-Nursing) Sophomore Cassaberry Biology Senior Dally Biology Sophomore Eaton Pre-Nursing Post-Bac Program France Biology Sophomore Grogl Biology Sophomore Hora Biology Sophomore Iggy Biology Sophomore Jolly Biology Sophomore Koran Biology Sophomore Lincoln Biology Sophomore Meoclock Health Sophomore Nore Biology Sophomore Opal Biology Sophomore Santa Biology Sophomore Quince Biology Senior Regal Biology Sophomore Tally Biology Sophomore Umi Biology Sophomore Vance Biology Sophomore Warton Biology Senior Xavier Biology Sophomore Yoli Biology Sophomore
126 Students’ Procedures
Students were asked to write a rhyme in a language that was reflective of the material they were learning. The Fall semester students had the option of either creating music or constructing a physical or electronic art piece. The Fall semester involved a joint performance where both classes presented their music and artwork in front of one another in an auditorium outside of class time. The Spring semester students were only able to work on a music project and present within class time; a larger performance was not possible because a bigger space was not available. The Fall semester students choose between a music and art piece because there was less material to learn in the course. More time was needed to create the physical and electronic art pieces as many of the students never created art that would be displayed before. The Spring semester students were taking a more difficult course so they did not have as much time to learn how to build certain art-related items. The Fall semester students also performed and presented their creations in front of over 100 individuals, and so extra time was needed to practice and prepare the material in class. The students invited their friends, classmates, and other faculty members to the performance presented in front of their classmates, friends, and faculty members.
Each performance took place within 2 weeks of the last day of class at the University.
Each student competed against another student in either a 1 vs. 1 or 2 vs. 2 format.
Students were informed about making music in relation to the course from the first day of class.
They were asked to prepare two drafts of the song—the first one due 5 weeks after the beginning of the course, the second one due 3 weeks later. The timeframe was created so students could develop content knowledge about the field before they began creating music about the course
127 and have time to edit another draft before they performed the music they created. Half of the students were asked to email the words they intended to perform after 5 weeks after the first day so they could be checked for science content and flow. The other half of the students were asked to not only email the written content, but to create a video of them performing the song.
Students were asked to send in a video in the hope it would make get them more comfortable communicating in different ways. Boys were allowed to partner with girls, and same-gender groups of boy and boy and girl and girl were permitted. Students were allowed to choose any musical genre they liked: rap, country, techno, or R&B. They could also incorporate a beat or instruments if they felt moved to do so.
Student Data Collection
Of the 64 students who participated in this study, 42 participated in the battle rap portion, and 19 participated in the physical art and electronic art portion. Participants were asked to submit their battle rap in writing; if they participated in the art portion, they were asked to submit a picture of their art piece. Participants were asked to write a paragraph reflecting on their experience incorporating music and art into the classroom, or they were given the opportunity to respond to questions I wrote that they could answer about the experience. According to
Korthagen (2001), reflection is the instrument by which experiences are translated into dynamic knowledge. Along with receiving reflections, some students were randomly selected to be interviewed in person or in a focus group for this case study. The in-person interview took place
1 week after their performance in class, after classes ended. Two focus group interviews were conducted. One group interview took place in the last class of the Physiology course; another
128 group interview took place after both Cell Biology classes performed at the end of the Fall semester.
Data Analysis
Student reflections, interview transcripts, focus groups, lyrics, researcher’s notes, and any feedback provided by participants were reviewed after being transcribed. They were analyzed to gain an understanding of how students felt about incorporating battle rap and art into a STEM course. The data was also analyzed to understand how the course differed from traditional teaching methods and to determine if students felt battle pedagogy was beneficial to learning
STEM content.
Findings
I first begin by stating the themes found within the students battle rap. Next, I state the themes found within the students’ reflections. Afterwards, I select and break down students’ quotes that were relevant to the overarching themes of this study. Then, I discuss the students’ end-of-semester presentation of the battle rap and arts portion. I specifically discuss a question I posed to the students asking them whether they preferred to take a test, write a 10-page paper, or perform a battle rap.
Student Battle Raps and Reflections on Battle Rap
The teaching style for the Cell Biology, Physiology, and Anatomy courses was changed from the traditional lecture and lab teaching style, to study whether battle pedagogy could be
129 used as a learning technique. Students had to take the form of battle rappers and teach their peers a topic in science with the intent of keeping the classroom engaged. Forty-two students participated in this portion of the study. They created music related to science content to teach their peers. Afterwards, students performed their rap. Some students had similar themes within their rhymes. The popular themes throughout the students’ songs were related to family, love, fear, passion, friendship, culture, altruism, stress relief and fun.
Although the students had different tastes in music genres, some students had similar themes within their rhymes. Students really liked the opportunity to be creative and work with someone else. Some felt they were competing for a grade which made some work harder. Others felt stressed out about the process of creating a rhyme to be performed. I should have done a better job sharing that they were not in competition with each other, but rather with the world.
Students and professionals move to the United States every year with similar content knowledge to those here. What can separate one student from others is how they use and apply the information they learn.
It is important to help students understand their strengths, weaknesses, and life areas that consume their mind the most. For instance, giving some students the opportunity to write allowed them and others an opportunity to see which thoughts seeped out first. One student I called Regal chose to write about a traumatic injury and, during member checking, she shared that her injury affected her Rowing career at the University. Following is an excerpt:
3 years since that fateful day and I’ve been seeing my bones more like sticks
3 metatarsals that have brought me lots of fear and lots of pain
but taught me how to live even though living ain’t quite the same
130 Feeling like a one when you used to be on tent
rusting my podiatrist was my second mistake back then
Regal appeared to be depressed since her injury. She was mad at herself, her body, and even her doctor. Although she wanted to become a doctor, could this make her not want to become a doctor anymore because of her anger—or perhaps not be a good doctor? Helping her to unpack what she went through was advantageous. Had it not been for this exercise, I would have never known what she was going through. In short, understanding what students have faced allows me to be a better teacher. Another student, Quince, incorporated her father into a rhyme:
Starting off on the outside, our protection
My daddy always told me I’ve got thick skin
when I was young, I’d fall off my bike, kinda scary
Time to talk about the integumentary
Quince shared that her father was an engineer and encouraged her to enter the sciences.
Hearing these stories made me closer to my students, and the music brought my students closer to the material. They appreciated being able to add their own spin to the content knowledge they were receiving.
One way to add content to long-term memory is by attaching it to an emotion. The combination of adding emotion to content, as well as converting that emotional content into a song, may enhance students’ learning ability. When utilizing battle pedagogy, students observed how music can be used as a mnemonic and a new learning tool. For Quince, this project was very similar to one she had done before in her sixth grade science class. She once wrote a song about
131 acids and bases to the tune of “Tik Tok” by Ke$ha, so she was familiar with incorporating academic facts into an artistic model. Most interestingly, Quince said that writing a song or poem about certain topics helped her remember the content much more easily than plainly studying it.
In fact, she still remembered the song she wrote in the sixth grade and probably would not have recalled the content had it not been in music.
For this project, crafting the riddles proved difficult since we tried to maintain a rhyme throughout but also keep the identity of the systems hidden. For the most part, the riddles became easier to write once we had written a few because we were already in the mindset of what we wanted to present. In all, this project, although stressful with the presentation portion, not only displayed how science can be incorporated into other forms of learning but also showed how students can utilize other modes of learning to learn better. Other students felt the music could help their communication skills in the academic world and other areas of their lives, as Santa shared:
Also we included base-base mutations which can be characterized as missense or
nonsense mutations which we used to our advantage by saying our opponents were
“talking nonsense.” In addition to using science to attack, we also included some pop
culture references to act as modern rappers do to gain their audiences attention. For
example, when talking about Okazaki fragments, I say that they are chopped up, locked
up like Tekashi. This is a reference to the recent artist who was sent to jail which was
surrounded by plenty of media buzz. Overall this project was very unique to me, but
improved my way of thinking as I now see that the information you possess is not your
132 primary asset, but rather the manner in which you exchange this information with others
will determine your influence.
Santa figured out a way to keep people’s attention while also educating them during this critical thinking exercise of conjuring up rhymes to present to the class. Some students felt the music portion was nerve-wracking because they feared public speaking, but they felt having a partner with them helped ease that stress.
While others found the battle rap enjoyable, Iggy found this technique to be scary.
According to Student I, battle rapping in science class as a teaching style was:
Definitely something that I have never done before and although the thought of branching
out of my comfort zone is very scary I have been trying to do more things that make me
uncomfortable so that I can experience more things and grow as a person. I have
struggled with panic disorder for many years and a lot of my panic attacks have caused
me to avoid things that I would normally love to do. As part of treatment, I am supposed
to be doing a lot of things that would normally cause panic or cause problems for me, so
it is especially good for me to challenge myself to do things that I am not all that
comfortable with.
Although Iggy was uncomfortable with the idea of battle rapping in science, this teaching style allowed her to step out of her comfort zone, experience something different, and boost her motivation to learn science.
133 Some students found battle pedagogy to be therapeutic. Cassaberry explained that the project was therapeutic in a way she did not expect. Although the performance gave her heavy anxiety, she had fun practicing and making the material, which was a cathartic process for her.
As a result, Cassaberry changed her studying methods and became aware that science did not always have to be so serious but can be fun. Dally also found this teaching style to be therapeutic:
Music has an incredible capacity to help people express themselves, move them
emotionally, and give them an outlet for stress and anxiety. I already have my music
outlets which I already turn to for just about any emotional state. For someone who
doesn’t have that connection already, I would think this project would be very
therapeutic. I must say that for me though, it did give me a creative outlet which I do not
find myself using often.
Koran and Lincoln both agreed that creating music in science class was very therapeutic for them as well. According to Koran, battle pedagogy was surprisingly therapeutic for him:
“Science courses are usually so intense and demanding, creating a song was a good way to do something fun and exciting in the midst of back-to-back exams. It was also nice to take a break from being so stressed all the time and just relax and have fun, while also learning at the same time.” Lincoln also concluded that the assignment to create a song was:
…therapeutic because music allows you to express yourself while connecting with others.
I have heard about music being a form of therapy since music can improve individuals’
speech and memory. Music even helps people to develop positive self-images, release
134 stress, and provides emotional healing, and although it was challenging, it was also an
interesting change from the norm.
Many students expressed that incorporating battle pedagogy into science class allowed them to understand the value in what they were learning and enhanced the learning process.
Arma stated in his reflection that through his experience of creating battle pedagogy in his science class, he was able to explore the business side of science and discovered a love for science and business. Student Arma also expressed that he would like to take some business classes, although he did not have time to incorporate them into his schedule. He added:
We receive little training as medical school students on how to start a practice which is
very important in starting a new business. I think it is important that we recognize that
early on and take the necessary steps to prepare, innovate and succeed. It’s a little sad to
not see life skills like running a business discussed in any other science class I’ve taken.
There is life beyond labs and I think this class has certainly helped me gain a better
understanding of how to prepare for that as well as how to look at many of life’s
obstacles from different perspectives.
According to Arma, including battle pedagogy in science class helped shape his view for the future and opened some avenues he did not know were possible. Arma found the experiment to be very successful and was able to gain life lessons and experiences.
Bilal expressed his experience in his reflection as well. By using battle pedagogy, Bilal was able to learn that he was “an effective presenter of information and can engage people in
135 material. I learned that everyone is different and should access and learn material in different ways.” Bilal also expressed that battle pedagogy in the science setting “exposed me to more science being applied to the world. The class was a change of pace to other science classes I’ve taken.”
Dally also stated that he had a more personal connection on the topic he wrote about.
Many students viewed battling against each other as a competition, but Eaton expressed that she did not view this method of teaching as a competition; instead, she viewed it as a way to support her classmates: “I never have the mentality that I’m competing against someone. Instead I went in ready to support my classmate.” Hora shared:
I really enjoyed presenting the song to the class. My partner and I did a mix of “YMCA”
by the Village People and “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” from Mulan, and it was so much
fun! We wanted to do something kind of funny and something to take people’s minds off
stressful day to day activities and obligations. I think we did just that, complete with
themed costumes and a fight scene. I also loved how everyone was so supportive which is
not always common in the sciences. I thought incorporating the arts in a biology class
was a creative way to remember key points in the material. I do not think it was very
helpful for detailed explanations of the information, but getting the gist of the material
was met through creativity.
I felt the incorporation of business and research into the class was helpful because it is
not something we usually get to think about in our everyday classes. I think scientist need
to be aware of the possibilities of starting businesses and also how to express their ideas
and research in an effective way. I think that the connections and networking we had in
136 the class was very valuable. In the first week, when Prof. Parker said we would be getting
to know each other, I was a bit skeptical, but I think we all bonded as a class. I learned
that I don’t have to be so serious all the time with science and that I can just sit back and
enjoy the process. I think this class helped me to connect to others better, to collaborate
on group projects, and to think outside of the box. I enjoyed this class!
Hora appreciated the different learning techniques I introduced into the course, including the song creation process, networking, and ways to enjoy science. Meoclock described her encounter with incorporating the arts in a biology class as being a great idea. “Music has great benefits in improving memory skills, connecting different components into a bigger picture, and can enhance communication skills. Even though music and science are separate fields. “It was great to see how collaborative the science community is.” Meoclock was able to experience the interrelation and interconnection of music and science. Using the arts to problematize science gave a fresh, new perspective on Meoclock educational experience. Additionally, Meoclock was able to gain better access communication. This teaching style helped Meoclock gain insight into who she really was a good team player. Her leadership skills had increased, and she was open- minded and considered everyone’s perspectives and opinions. Meoclock was now aware of the importance of hearing other people’s perspectives, which is valuable for expanding knowledge and enhancing the creation of innovative ideas.
The creation of innovative ideas is important when developing cures for ailments.
Bacteria and viruses can mutate altering how they affect humans and other living creatures. If contagious diseases are not stopped early, it can cause many to get ill like the Corona Virus is
137 doing. The Corona Virus is a contagious disease that is mutating in carriers across the world
(Petrone & Grubaugh, 2020). Approaching a deadly mutating disease will take knowledge and creativity.
The word I found most often in the students’ reflections was the word creativity. Many students found the process of writing a rap to be challenging especially since it had to relate to science, and many had not encountered a learning tool like this. One of my goals was to allow students to have fun coming up with coming with new ways of thinking about a problem. With the Corona Virus currently wreaking havoc in the U.S. and the world, it will take creativity, knowledge and collaboration to stop the spread of the virus. Creativity, knowledge and collaboration and knowledge are some of the things battle pedagogy teaches students are important for growth and survival. Not only in group projects, or class, but the world, and its problems. This teaching style required students to step out of their comfort zone and explore different avenues of creativity, Cassaberry expressed her experience of creating a battle rap for the first time:
The process of writing science music was actually very fun. I thought that it was a
creative way to learn the material. It got a little tricky when I had to make the lyrics
match the rhythm and syllable structure of the original music in order to flow nicely.
Rhyming science words like “amylase” and “digestion” was a lot easier than I thought. I
liked having to think critically about rhyme schemes and how to ensure that the science
lyrics would match the syllable sequence/rhythm provided by the original song lyrics.
138 According to Cassaberry, presenting her music gave her the ability to express herself better in science courses and allowed her brain to process the material in a fun and creative way.
Cassaberry also stated that “I might not create a song for everybody system or science topic I encounter, I think I’ve learned that creating tiny musical rhythms could help me study. I often find that I can remember song lyrics very quickly, so I could probably benefit from adding a musical component to my studying tricks.”
Cassaberry feels music can help her recall info, whereas Dally wants to learn enough about each science topic, to put the material into a song. For Dally “writing songs really required you to know the overall topic thoroughly before starting to write, unlike writing a paper where you can reference a book or power point.” The process of creating a song was easy for Dally, he mentioned the writing process was very different from anything he was accustomed to, but felt it wasn’t that difficult. For some students incorporating battle pedagogy into the classroom has proven to be very challenging.
Some students found it challenging to condense scientific topics into a rap. Raps are usually three minutes (Aarström, 2008), but some science topics take longer than that to explain.
For example, Koran expressed that creating a rap required rewording explanations in a way that fit into music. For most students, the process of creating the rap was difficult because of finding words that could rhyme with science terms. Eaton stated in her reflection that it was “tough.
Finding words that rhyme is one hell of a thinking process. You basically have to pick your own brain and run through a mental dictionary.” Battle pedagogy requires students to think critically and examine their knowledge, in order to consider what they may need to complete a task.
139 Other students found creating battle pedagogy to be much more difficult than expected.
For others like Student Quince, having a partner to work with helped in order to bounce ideas off each other and suggest new ideas, ultimately making the final result better. Quince also explained that the process was time-consuming and he had to make sure there were enough syllables in each line to match the beat of the music. Overall, Quince found the process of participating in battle pedagogy fun and exciting because he had never done it before.
Dally also found the assignment fun. He wanted to add a fun element to his song because the team he was versing with also had the same music theme. “It was enjoyable to see how they took the same music and adapted it to their own tempo and style and also for a completely different topic,” Dally stated. France also found the process of writing science music difficult but extremely enjoyable. France and her partner divided the original Fresh Prince of Bel Air lyrics in half and went through the original lyrics and syllables of each line. Then, they started piecing together the different types of information about the digestive system. “The most difficult part was making the ends of the first two lines of a verse rhyme and the second two lines of a verse rhyme while having each sentence make sense and flow well.” Student F found the writing process to be interesting and unique, despite the difficulty in crafting the song.
By contrast, Eaton and Grogl found the writing process very nerve-wracking. For Eaton, performing the rap she wrote in front of her classmates made her nervous. She explained that for
University commencement, she sang with the University Choir both The National Anthem and the schools Alma Mater in front of a few thousand people, but she was not nervous and could soak in the moment. However, performing a song she wrote for class made her pretty nervous but before she knew it, the song was over and she enjoyed the performance. Grogl explained that
140 the thought of her performing in front of her classmates was nerve-wracking as well. It took her a few minutes to adjust to being in front of an audience. Writing music was new to Grogl and she found the assignment hard to accomplish because the song had to be about science. Perhaps most difficult for her was trying to cover all the material and ensuring the song had a good flow.
Student Art Project and Reflections
Science can be viewed as an intimidating subject due to the amount of information that must be memorized, the complexity of the material and its tediousness (Appleton, 1995). The subject requires remembering much information. Some students appreciate when they can garner content information along with enhancing other skills that can benefit them in life. Students who chose to incorporate art into their learning experience displayed their work in front of both Cell
Biology classes. They invited friends and family to the gathering. Pizza, cookies, and beverages were provided. All the students displayed their art on a table for others to see and could hear others’ feedback about their work. Creating art related to science helped enhance skills that may help them in their future careers.
Nore and Opal learned about the process of teamwork and how to relay information about science to others in a new way. They created a comic book discussing the main properties of the immune system. A page from the comic book is depicted below (see Figure 1). They took the flu virus and discussed how both the innate and adaptive immune systems of the body work together to get rid of a virus. The flu is very common, yet many may not know the exact process of how the body attempts to get rid of it. Understanding the process of the immune system is very
141 complicated, but Nore explained that he had a better understanding of the roles of each element the immune system has in the body.
Figure 1
Comic Book
Nore also stated that students should not limit themselves to only textbooks: “Learning can be done through many other means including music, and even comic books. There is no correct way of learning and it should not be confined to just books. This was a creative and enjoyable way to deliver and teach about an important part of the human body and I enjoyed doing this project.” Nore went on to share:
142 I really enjoyed the event and feel that I took a valuable experience along with me. In the
event alone, I discovered many talents that I didn’t know people had. I even discovered
new things about those I was friends with. As for myself, I have always enjoyed doing art
and digital media. Being able to use this passion in a college Biology class was great. I
saw some amazing artwork and was impressed by all the creativity it showed. Personally,
I am happy with how our project turned out and I appreciated the fact that others also
liked our comic. I also enjoyed doing the research presentations. Usually, presentations in
a Bio class focuses mainly on a specific chapter of Biology. However, we were able to
pick a real-life scenario and present our findings on that. I believe that taught us not only
how to analyze the real world in a scientific lens, but also helped improve our
presentation skills. What I think was most beneficial was having the time in class to
discuss our research as we went about completing it. Having opinions from others was
very beneficial. I believe I have definitely improved not only in the process of research
itself, but also developed some key presentation skills. This class has definitely helped
me in preparing for the future.
Opal shared sentiments similar to Nore’s thoughts. Opal felt that getting sick is a large part of everyone’s life, but not many people actually know how their immune system works to fight off viruses or infections. Opal expressed his enjoyment in learning about the immune system and the immunological response to bacteria, viruses, and infections.
At the beginning of the course, Opal set a goal to learn more about the immune system and gain more in-depth understanding of how humans can fight off pathogens through their
143 complex systems. He understood that the immune system is a difficult concept to comprehend and wanted to provide a fun method that allowed him to take his knowledge of the immune system and explain it in a fun way through art. Opal’s interest in the immune system process came from his experience in middle school where he remembered his teacher showing:
clips from a movie about how each of the cells work, and it made me enjoy learning
about the topic much more than I normally would have. This led me to want to create
something similar, but with my own twist and interpretation of the sequence of events
that would take place in the immune system, if our immune cells were characters. I feel
that many children could have more interest in science if they were to see how it can be
pleasurable and creative, and comic books are one way that people can use science in a
more artistic manner. I have always enjoyed doing art projects and wanted to try use
technology to create an art project that could be colorful, interesting, and educational at
the same time. I think it is very important to gain an understanding of something that is a
large part of our lives, and a comic book is an easy and fun way to learn something new.
Lincoln’s work is depicted in Figure 2. He chose to create an art piece for the project by depicting the Potassium-Sodium Pump through pictures. He explained his art piece in detail:
The letter N and the letter K represent sodium and potassium respectively in the picture.
The six bagua is the pump. Other shapes represent other biological materials in the cells.
The idea behind this drawing comes from the classic symbol of bagua in Chinese culture.
The figure represents a perfect balance. I combine this idea with the dynamic equilibrium
144 concentration between the inner cell and outer cell to show the importance of maintaining
a relative balance on the cell biological level in human bodies.
Figure 2
Lincoln’s Artwork
Lincoln continued to explain the reason behind his idea of combining art with science. He had become frustrated by not being an individual who excels at creating something unique. “It was difficult deciding what to do and how to start the project.” He wanted to do something easy and thought this portrayal of science seemed like a good way to show off his years of painting and sketching. While trying to complete the project, Lincoln discovered that he lacked imagination and creativity to compose a unique work of his own. This project allowed him to discover his shortcomings within his thought process, and now he wants to understand more ways to develop his creative side. A valuable lesson he learned was to work consistently on new projects, as an old “process might appear dull and repeated…we should always work on something we are genuinely interested in.”
145 Battle Rap Performance (Fall)
The Fall semester Cell Biology students came together to present their battle raps and artwork to about 100 individuals. Friends of the students and faculty members came to observe the festivities. Figure 3 presents a flyer created to advertise the event.
Figure 3.
Flyer for Battle Rap
The students seemed happy and surprised that this type of event was occurring. Some students dressed up, invited their friends, and surprised themselves with how well they performed. The audience cheered as they watched the performances and examined the students’ artwork. By the end of the night, I gathered the Cell Biology students together and recorded their responses on how they felt about performing in front of others. Some students screamed out
“intimidated” and “rap is harder than it looks.” Santa exclaimed:
146 This is good because most teachers don’t encourage talking in class, or discussions in
groups, it’s like, mostly lectures, so this was an interesting take and I think it made us
come out of our shell and feel more comfortable in front of an audience, so I really
appreciate that.”
Hora added:
Everyone was supportive of each other, which I thought was really important because
even though we were doing something that was out of our comfort zone or maybe even a
little silly people were still there supporting you. Sometimes in the scientific community
that’s not really a thing.
Umi chimed in and said, “I loved seeing everyone’s creativity, it was kinda cool, we were given the assignment of music and art everyone just came up with something really original and different, so that was very nice.” Following that statement, Vance added: “I liked it, I thought it was a nice to add a music component because creatively we don’t get to express it much in the science courses.” The student also added, “Everyone was very supportive, and it was great for everyone to engage in something and be supportive at the same time.”
Next, I asked the art individuals how they felt about presenting their work. Tally shared:
“It was a little stressful because mine took a while, but it was nice because it was different from what we typically do as biology majors.” Warton shared, “I really liked the art component of this.
Like everyone else said, it is really different from other science courses. I want to be a dentist so that kind of combines art and science, so it was awesome to actually combine the two.”
147 Based on the students’ responses, they appreciated the different elements this course allowed them to tap into. They liked seeing others’ creativity, interacting with others, and receiving support from others. I learned a lot working with the Fall Semester students and tried to carry that experience over into the Spring Semester.
Battle Rap Performances (Spring)
During the Spring semester, Anatomy and Physiology students performed battle raps in their classrooms during class time. All the students did extremely well and appeared to enjoy their time in front of others despite being nervous. Their faces showed confidence, as if saying: If
I can get through this performance, I can get through anything. They may have felt this way given the unique nature battle pedagogy which allowed them to incorporate who they truly are into something they loved—an experience both scary and exciting at the same time. The school newspaper learned I was putting on another performance with my students and attended one of them. The news writer wrote about the event which took place in the Anatomy class, discussing the positive emotions in the air from both students and faculty. When she asked Student L about incorporating battle rap into the class, he replied: “It was nerve-wracking but worthwhile.
Making a song that made sense made us actually focus on something and figure out what systems and parts connect.”
The news writer also asked Xavier what she thought: “Never before have I had a music component for a college course, let alone a science class, so it was unique and refreshing.” These students felt revitalized and more focused on science after utilizing battle pedagogy in the classroom. Although many students in the Anatomy class enjoyed the process, one student
148 became ill during the semester and left the course. Thus, I had to fill in for the student’s battle rap portion and actually come up with a rhyme. I partnered with one of my students and I can say the entire process was not easy. Coming up with rhymes about science was frustrating because I know I can exemplify sharp creativity if I am tested the right way but being asked to rhyme was so novel and not as easy as I anticipated. It was nice working with my student because I had not interacted with her much in class, so the time we spent coming up with the rhyme allowed me to build a bond with her that I may not have done without working on this project together.
Regarding the Physiology course, I asked during a group interview how the students felt they felt about incorporating battle pedagogy into the class and Yoli replied:
I liked it, I studied through the Power Points, I’m a visual learner, so doing a song for me,
doing a song for me doesn’t help me study the material as much, it makes understand it,
it’s kind of like different way to think about the material, but when it comes to an exam,
that wouldn’t work for me, but, I think it is something that is creative and makes you kind
of think outside the box regarding science and stuff. I’m competitive so I liked doing it. I
liked working with partners which is not something I have not done before.
I loved the level of detail Yoli put into this answering this question. For her to be able to distinguish between what can help her learn the material and conceptualize the material differently was interesting to hear. She felt battle pedagogy was great for her once she mastered the material and liked incorporating others during the learning process as well. Based on the responses from all four classes, battle pedagogy can be a unique way to encourage interactions among students, give them a space to compete against one another, and allow them to
149 conceptualize science material differently. After understanding how my students felt about incorporating battle pedagogy, I wanted to understand why they chose to be science majors in the first place.
Reasons Why Students Chose to Be Science Majors
Students offered numerous reasons for choosing a science major. One was because of their interest in pursuing a career in the medical field or to keep the tradition in the family. For example, Student E discussed in her reflections that her passion for science came from her grandmother: “My grandmother was a nurse and a major source of inspiration and the reason I want to be in the medical field. Her stories about how she became a nurse, and things that happened on the job were sometimes frightening but also endearing because of how many people she was able to help.” Eaton’s passion for science came from her need to help others and she was inspired by her grandmother’s stories.
France also explained that she chose science as her major because she valued the medical field and has a passion for caring and helping others. She expressed that she was undecided about her major, but when she started attending pre-health events on campus and working on this science battle pedagogy project, she decided nursing was the right path. Science in general is
“incredibly fascinating because it’s always advancing and improving in order to find the most effective way to treat individuals,” according to France.
These students chose to major in science because of family encouragement, the experience of this course, or their own passion for the medical field. In addition, although
150 students had options for their future majors, they did not always have choices in how they would be tested on that major’s material.
Take a test, write a 10-page paper, or perform a song
I gave student these choices, and of the 29 replies, 30% preferred taking tests, 10% wanted to write papers, and 60% chose incorporating the battle pedagogy method into the science class. For many students, the answer was clear and simple. Many preferred creating an art piece over taking exams. Although the idea of using arts/music in the science setting is fairly new, this concept has proven effective and many students prefer this as a teaching style. Student
C expressed how her participation in using music in her science class was unforgettable:
I would prefer making a musical rhyme. I can honestly say that I don’t think I’ll forget
the time that I “rapped” (correction: poorly rapped) about the digestive system to the
Fresh Prince of Bel-Air Theme Song with an equally hilarious partner. My family and
friends who have seen video footage of my performance definitely will never let me live
it down. It was a fun process and fun time. Much less stressful and time consuming than
having to write a boring ten-page paper or take an exam.
Eaton expressed the same opinion as Cassaberry: “I rather create a musical rhyme than to take a test. I enjoyed my own work, and especially loved what my classmates presented. It kept my interest the entire time. Papers and tests are boring and mind numbing. You’re not activating the creative part of your brain.”
151 Many students shared the same opinion along with Cassaberry and Eaton. France indicated that musical rhyme was better than taking a test and writing a paper because he could combine science into the arts while learning much about the digestive system. According to
France, “If more assignments like the art project is given to students, there would be an increase in passion for school and students will be willing to pursue a career in the sciences, which is believed to be one of the hardest majors.” Iggy also preferred to write music about science than to take a test. He stated that he enjoyed writing music because it was different: “Every science course I’ve taken focuses on the memorization and regurgitation of facts; I appreciate the change in format.”
Warton actually preferred either taking a test or making song:
I think I would prefer either tests or making a musical rhyme, I like taking tests because
they allow me to see how well I learned and retained specific material, and therefore tells
me how much harder I need to work to be the student and future employee that I want to
be, but I would also like to create a musical rhyme because it allows me to tap into my
creative side that lies dormant in the science classroom and takes some of the stress and
intermittent “boringness” away from the subject.
This student appreciated being examined, but also enjoyed creating a rhyme that allowed her the opportunity to build on her knowledge in a less stressful way. While many students preferred the change in the teaching method of science, a few actually preferred taking exams or writing papers rather than making a song. Grogl communicated this as she found it extremely hard to write a paper because of her difficulty to self-express: “I know what I want to say, but I
152 cannot find the words to get the point across. With tests, it is a lot easier to study material and then arrive at one concrete answer and put that down on the paper. I also do not consider myself to be creative so writing songs/rhymes is really hard for me.”
Although Grogl opted for taking a test over writing a paper, Student K and Student D chose writing a 10-page paper. In Koran’s opinion:
Writing an essay is a way to determine somebody’s true understanding of concepts.
Taking a test would be preferable to making a musical rhyme, but tests often make the
mistake of evaluating somebody’s ability to briefly remember and regurgitate facts. A
paper requires research, understanding of a concept, and translating your findings into
your own words; this seems like the most sustainable method of learning, because it
prompts you to write about the material in a way that makes sense to you. Musical rhyme
tests your ability to simplify concepts and demands creativity, but ultimately gives no
indication that anybody understands what they’re singing about.
While Koran preferred writing a paper, he felt tests and musical rhymes each carried a specific importance to the learning process which should not be overlooked. He also shared that he did not believe students could gain a better understanding of the material from writing a musical rhyme. Dally, who also preferred the 10-page paper or an exam, disagreed with Koran to some extent by saying: “Musical rhyme was very helpful in learning the material and I enjoyed the experience.” Dally felt he learned the material and appreciated the process. One reason he preferred papers or exams was he did not believe in his imagination: “Ultimately I feel like I would be more confident in my abilities to prepare for a paper or an exam than to write music.
153 Personally, I just don’t trust my own musical ability or creativity.” His preference is tied into his lack of confidence about stepping out of his comfort zone and experiencing something new.
Eaton, on the other hand, preferred taking a test but revealed that the art project helped him realize how science can be super fun and less serious than people take it to be. “I think it would also be cool to turn my future work into songs so I can memorize it better.”
Shortly after the Spring semester ended, I received an email from a facility where Xavier volunteered. Xavier showed the news article that had been written about our battle rap performance and featured her picture and quote to her supervisors. She volunteered at an after school learning center for adolescents. This facility believed the battle pedagogy concept could help them retain students and involve them more in the STEM field. I look forward to exploring these measures and others. The note, slightly edited, appears in Figure 4. Below are two email responses to the battle raps held during the Spring and Fall semester I discuss the Spring email first and then the email I received from a faculty member in the Fall.
154 Figure 4.
Email response to performance
At another time, a professor sent me an email sharing his thoughts about the battle pedagogy event he observed in the Fall semester. He appreciated the turnout and, during member checking, shared, “It is a beautiful thing to watch your students come alive as they find poetic and musical lenses to view their own research.” He also clarified what he meant when he mentioned that battle pedagogy allows science students to break stereotypes (see Figure 5). In short, he shared, “Science students are typically stigmatized as nerds and to see their emotional resonance with the subject was unique.”
At another time, a professor sent me an email sharing his thoughts about the battle pedagogy event he observed in the Fall semester. He appreciated the turnout and, during member
155 checking, shared, “It is a beautiful thing to watch your students come alive as they find poetic and musical lenses to view their own research.” He also clarified what he meant when he mentioned that battle pedagogy allows science students to break stereotypes (see Figure 5). In short, he shared, “Science students are typically stigmatized as nerds and to see their emotional resonance with the subject was unique.”
Figure 5.
Professor’s reaction to performance
156 Discussion
I conducted a qualitative research study to answer three research questions on the idea of incorporating battle rap into the science classroom. The research findings from the experiment conducted in Cell Biology, Anatomy and Physiology post-secondary courses analyzing 24 students suggested that implementing battle pedagogy as a learning tool allows students to increase their ability to memorize material from these courses, an improvement in their ability to be creative and the opportunity to develop better communication skills. In addition, battle rap can be used instead of or as a complement to traditional lectures and can be a form of active learning.
One of my goals with this research was to improve communication. I wanted them to learn how to move a crowd without a gun. To show them people can be moved with words, and interactions do not have to end in violence. If more students were able to use battle pedagogy to practice communicating with one another in the class, students may actually learn how to communicate better with their classmates. Hopefully this increase in communication in school, leads to more efficient ways to communicate with others outside of school. Battle pedagogy derives from two individuals participating in a debate, except they are rhyming to each other.
Debate programs have been found to improve students’ communication, soft skills, and thinking about complex issues (Chikeleze, Johnson, & Gibson 2018). Because of the similarity between battle pedagogy and debate, students will not only gain communication skills but also have a venue to express their joy and pain in ways that resonate with their culture. As a result, we may begin to have a society that does not resort to physical or verbal violence when misunderstandings arise. Violence among youth and adults is unfortunately increasing (Heller,
157 2014). If we can teach individuals new ways to communicate their problems, we can see a possible decrease in violence as they de-escalate the problems and elevate their dialogues. Battle pedagogy can not only reduce violence but also save lives.
In fact, many of my students will go on to be medical doctors, earn PhDs, or have other careers in the health field. These professions require good communication skills (Riemer, 2007).
Medical doctors have a duty to understand their patients’ symptoms to avoid misdiagnosis
(Salmon, Peters, & Stanley, 1999). A PhD must properly relay research findings to the world or else risk misinforming the world. In some jobs, individuals have little interaction and any miscommunication can cause harm to individuals (Abbas, Raja, Darr & Bouckenooghe, 2014). If we begin to educate students in new modes of communication, they can effectively communicate their thoughts to their patients, other researchers, and even their future students.
As I look back over this work, I recognize that when my students crafted their first battle pedagogy assignment, they did not write rhymes, they wrote prescriptions—prescription’s to heal themselves, prescriptions to heal a broken education system that leaves people in debt and, in some cases, worse off than when they first started (Wade,1998). This study supports the idea of using a new concept in science education, battle pedagogy. It has the potential to increase engagement in STEM courses, which may encourage students to remain in STEM, or join it in the first place if they enjoyed their experience within STEM. Given the deficit in STEM majors
(Heilbronner, 2011), we must be creative in attracting more individuals to the field and making sure that how educate not only improves content knowledge but also interactions with others about that knowledge. It is my firm belief that battle pedagogy should be incorporated into the education system at every level.
158 Composing and delivering effective methods of engagement involve first understanding the purpose of what students should be learning. Next, engaging with the students in a they may be able to relate which is essentially a culturally relevant manner. Finally, allowing the students to incorporate and interpret their feelings along with the material they are learning. These were the methods used within the course, and the students enjoyed learning in this manner.
Suggesting this is an effective method of engaging with students.
Battle rap allows students the opportunity to express themselves without being judged. It allows the students to share personal information with both the teacher and their peers which they feel should be given to their audience. When students take on the role of the battle rapper and essentially become the teacher, this process allows other students to hear how their peers interpret science content. Understanding how a peer analyzes a topic can be helpful (Goldschmid
& Goldschmid, 1976), as some professors may not be able to relate to some students due to differences in age and culture.
Student reflections, answers to questions, battle raps, and interviews were displayed in the previous section. The information revealed the impact of incorporating battle pedagogy in a post-secondary student’s learning experience within a classroom. The students’ information was randomly selected, and each was analyzed for common themes. Much of the students’ music, and reflections discussed love. Whether the love was through their passion for completing school, issues interacting with one another based on love, or the love of their family. Many students talked about their family as a motivation for pursuing a science career or called science their passion. Many noted that their previous learning experiences contributed to their view of science. Other students expressed that the battle pedagogy technique boosted their engagement
159 with science or actually felt therapeutic. Some students explained that incorporating music into a science class opened avenues for new hobbies, enhanced their talents, allowed them to embrace their culture, promoted creativity, and increased their motivation to study science. For most students, this was also a novel way to interact with their peers, boost their confidence, learn better research methods, change old studying methods, experience a form of therapy, and build networking abilities.
One of the most interesting findings from this study was that the students with the highest grades in my course seemed to create the best songs. To ensure that I did not bias the results, I allowed others to judge the battle. The judges were not aware of the students grades prior to choosing the three individuals who had the highest marks in the class. I originally was not thinking about a correlation between winning the competition and grades. In hindsight, I believed this project would have captured students who were not doing well academically so they could excel on the music side of the grading, but that was not the case. What contributed to my thought process was watching different television shows and reading blogs that discussed a correlation between dropping out of school, failing grades and fame in the music industry (BET,
2015). These media sources subconsciously made me believe finding someone with good musical ability and higher than normal grades was rare. According to my study, I have now learned quite the opposite. The smartest person in the class, can also be a great rapper or musician. Being a good student does not guarantee someone will be a good rapper, hopefully future musicians realize that doing poorly in school and being a great musician are not always synonymous. Passion for a course can simply be passion for a course, and some students exert more effort on certain tasks than others do.
160 Most important was that students had an opportunity to practice seeing how others communicated and shared their ideas in an engaging way. According to their reflections, they had fun, made friends, and learned new ways to recall science information and practice their communication skills. The students felt this project was therapeutic; initially, they felt awkward during the process but developed a sense of accomplishment once they had performed. Family and friends showered them with love upon hearing their creations. Allowing them to see that an activity that starts off as difficult will not always stay that way can be one of their most valuable experiences in school.
Conclusion
I envision universities and colleges across the United States, and even the world, coming together and competing in a musical format based on science. I want this musical portion of science to reach a level where students are recruited from high school and receive scholarships to represent universities in battle pedagogy competitions. I look forward to this genre being recognized by the NCAA and, at some point, even televised, just as Spelling Bees are (Eran,
2008). I want this new wave of thinking to open the door for encouraging spectators not only at these academic events but also daily in classrooms.
During some tests, students should be allowed to have their friends and parents in the stands to cheer them on. Spectators should not only be allowed for moral support during sporting events; encouragement could also be used during written assignments, multiple-choice tests, and even class presentations. Encouragement from others should be possible for all, not just those participating in physical activities on school grounds. For example, pets should be allowed, signs
161 should be displayed, soothing music can be played as snacks and beverages are distributed during certain exams. These scenarios can reduce students’ anxiety and make them feel at ease.
Although some individuals may consider these distractions, others cannot imagine participating in certain activities without such supports. Exposing students to new ways of learning can help them understand new environments that may be optimal for receiving information.
Battle pedagogy incorporates a constructivist way of learning, currently pioneered by intellectual warriors. Devlin (2013) brilliantly broke down the difference between typical forms of education and a constructivist’s approach to learning based on an article written by
Wisniewiski (Devlin, Feldhaus, & Bentrem, 2013). Wisniewski (2010) observed two major paradigms in today’s schools: behaviorist and constructivist. Advocates for the behaviorist paradigm believe that the purpose of educators is to transfer knowledge to another in the form of direct instruction and memorization, and then to judge effectiveness with a traditional assessment. Efficiency is key and the transfer of knowledge is time-sensitive and normally done through lectures. In contrast, advocates of the constructivist paradigm believe in a very different approach. Constructivists believe that knowledge is built on existing knowledge. They also believe in demonstrating real-world connections to increase engagement and authenticity. The core belief of this form of education is that students play an active role in constructing new knowledge. The learning is student-centered, and the teacher assumes the role of facilitator.
The students in my courses used the knowledge they garnered over the courses as well as their own lives and came up with rhymes that allowed them to become closer to the material and recall it better. Dr. Halsey, a professor within the STEAM field, supported a constructivist
162 approach to learning, stating that the importance of concepts can help students understand vocabulary terms better (Dulberry, 2015):
It’s more important that students understand the concepts before they understand the
specific science terms and vocabulary. I think [traditionally taught] vocabulary kinda trips
people up and most people say that is typically the first thing you learn when you’re
learning something new is the vocabulary. But, if students [are trying to] use words that
have [root] words and prefixes they haven't even heard of, and they dont do well doing it,
they’re definitely not gonna wanna find out what [those words] mean and how they
apply. So in the classroom I would certainly suggest that teachers reinforce the concepts;
what’s really happening, why are we doing this, and why are we doing it in this manner?
What’s the purpose? (p. 102)
Understanding concepts can assist in student learning (Pang & Marton, 2005). What can also assist students in learning is having teachers, who are not afraid to try new ways of teaching, but also students who are not afraid to try new ways of learning (Peacock & Ho, 2003). Learning should not only be placed on the shoulders of teachers, but students must put effort into acquiring the information their teachers present. If a teacher’s approach does not work for a student, perhaps the student can try new ways of absorbing the information being conveyed.
Incorporating unorthodox techniques is not always positively received by others, nor can everyone handle criticism when trying something new. However, some individuals push forward and break down barriers. Those individuals are intellectual warriors.
163 The students in these courses exhibited characteristics of intellectual warriors when they willingly participated in incorporating elements of hip-hop and battle rap into their biology courses. While many individuals view science students as nerds, allowing them to have a voice outside of the classroom may encourage others to participate in the sciences and help retain students in the field. Individuals who participate in spaces outside of confining spaces open themselves to ridicule and possible expulsion from their group. Scientists do not typically engage in aspects of hip-hop and battle rap, but given that many students have expressed a disinterest in typical lectures (Lehner, 2007), students who are intellectual warriors do not hesitate to try something new if it can help with learning engagement.
Feeling supported, engaged, and happy should be at the forefront of the minds of those who run any schools—elementary, secondary, or post-secondary. This study indicated how battle pedagogy is a viable tool that allowed students more comfort in a class, new ways to learn, and successful engagement in the sciences. It also indicated how other organizations can use this tool to support student engagement and retention in STEM. As important as these factors are, we must also protect the students who participate within these spaces.
After conducting this work, I realized the importance of students having guidelines on appropriate language during a battle rap on campus. Areas like ethnicity, race and religion are allowed in typical battle raps (Mavima, 2015), however students should have the option to participate in a battle with restrictions on speech, or an option where they understand anything can be discussed. Some students may not mind a verbal attack on some areas about themselves, but may mind attacks on others. All restrictions during a battle should be discussed before a
164 battle begins, so all parties are clear on what is, and is not acceptable to ensure an enjoyable experience for everyone involved.
165 Chapter VI
SUMMARY AND REMARKS
Chapter I discussed why I chose to study the importance of incorporating aspects of battle rap into the education system and the research questions this study answered. Chapter II shared how previous research supports this study. Chapter III discussed the Summary of Data Collected,
IRB approval, the Validity of this study and the Data Analysis of these studies. Chapter IV was a study about professional battle rappers who discussed key mechanisms of engaging individuals that STEM teachers can incorporate in the classroom to assist with learning. Chapter V was a study about post-secondary STEM students who incorporated aspects of battle rap into their
STEM classroom and how it impacted their education. This chapter begins with an analysis of the two conclusions of this study, what I intend to do with the data I collected and a brief summary of information discussed in previous chapters. This chapter also includes Critiques of
Hip-Hop as well as Limitations and Future Research of this study.
Major Findings
The first study involved understanding the characteristics battle rappers employ when they successfully engage with an audience. According to DNA, the battle rappers I interviewed possessed abilities to freestyle, get hyped, show charisma; they have presence, character, performance and energy. These attributes can contribute to keeping individuals engaged. While the battle rappers were on stage performing, they could be seen laughing and having fun, interacting with audience members, concocting creative rhymes, and discussing aspects of their life as if they were in a therapy session.
166 The second study involved observing the effects of incorporating battle rap into postsecondary Biology courses. Students shared that the courses seemed fun, therapeutic, social, and very creative. They also shared they would like to be tested on their ability to create rhymes because it allowed them to think differently than they did in other courses. Creating rhymes allowed them the opportunity to conceptualize STEM material.
After analyzing both of these studies, it seemed evident to me that the way the battle rappers engaged their audience appeared similar to what the students in this study appreciated most about incorporating battle pedagogy into the courses. The battle rappers laughed and had fun on stage, while the students had fun making music and performing it for others. The battle rappers shared that performing on stage was therapeutic; the students shared that creating and performing rhymes were therapeutic because they of shared personal information with others and did not feel judged. Battle rappers interacted with their audience members while performing, and students appreciated the aspect of communicating in class with one another more than they usually had the opportunity to do. Battle rappers shared how important it was to freestyle, while students enjoyed the opportunity not to regurgitate information but be creative in the courses.
The ability to freestyle involves using creative elements of the brain to come up with rhymes without previously writing them down and doing this directly in front of an audience. Students shared how much they loved being creative throughout the courses.
The characteristics battle rappers exuded, then, seemed to be the same qualities students liked about incorporating battle pedagogy into their course. If we could train teachers to communicate the way these battle rappers do, students may feel more engaged in their science courses and absorb the material their teachers are sharing. If we incorporated battle pedagogy
167 into classrooms and allowed students to use it to create mnemonics and talk with other students, more students form bonds with one another. Students who form bonds in school are likely to stay in school as well as in their discipline (Jenkins, 1997). Thus, if battle pedagogy was incorporated in STEM courses, we may see an increase in the retention rate of students who enter the STEM field.
Implications of This Research
As a result of this research, it is my hope that more people in the community will become involved in science learning. I hope this study can encourage youth to pay attention to each classroom lesson. Prior to conducting this study, K-Shyne was the only rapper to have put together a science rap on his own and performed it before I met him. He is not a fan of the current school system because he believes school is delayed gratification—meaning reward only comes when and if the degree is awarded, which could take years or even decades in some cases.
We can circumvent this thought process by educating students rather than schooling them. The
Latin root of education can be translated as bringing out what is within (Korthagen, 2004).
Education is really about teaching and reinforcing the current space of an individual’s experiences. Teachers must connect past knowledge to what is presently going on in the community and society. Students must be initiated into education; to be a true teacher, one must teach, inspire, and initiate. Education without inspiration, is merely schooling (Reich, 2008).
Teaching without inspiration, is not initiating—and any combination thereof is also true
(Hargreaves, 2004). If youth are not initiated into the tribe, they will burn it down to feel its warmth.
168 Urban youth do not find love in the classroom, in society, or from each other. Thus, they are essentially burning down their community by selling illegal drugs, scrawling graffiti on their walls, stealing and committing violent crimes, while refusing to educate themselves. These things are deemed as negative. However, a heavy look should be taken as to why these occurrences happen. With the lack of hiring opportunities for Black and Brown individuals, some resort to selling drugs, or stealing to keep a roof over their heads, food on their table, clothes on their families backs. The more income an area has, the less crime is committed
(Freeman, 1994). We must increase disenfranchised groups income if we want to see less illegal activity. Graffiti can be illegal if the work was is done on city, government, corporate or someones personal property and they were not authorized to do that form of work (Lachmann,
1988). Graffiti typically occurs in low income communities (Adams &Winter, 2002). Some
Black and Brown youth graffiti in hopes someone acknowledges their presence since many feel government officials forgot to enhance Black and Brown communities. Black and Brown youth want to learn, however, some teachers do not know best practices when engaging with Black and
Brown youth.
As youth grow up, some believe activities in their communities are the norm and continue to enact in some of the activities described above. Never really understanding or asking how these conditions arose initially and begin to feel normal. That desperation, that authentic experience is found in today’s music, and if we don’t alter the messenger’s perspective or lived reality of the urban community, I am afraid it may not continue to exist in the next century. Thus, a dialogue between educators and individuals who share accounts of their realities with their
169 communities is necessary. To do that, we must create opportunities for these individuals to interact and observe the results.
Intentions
I intend to publish the two studies, and have identified potential journals for consideration-- the Journal Urban Learning Teaching and Research; Journal of Critical
Education; International Journal of Critical Pedagogy; or Journal of Multicultural Education.
Critiques of Hip-hop
Some limitations of today’s hip-hop are that the lyrics can be perceived as misogynistic, hyper-masculine, violent and homophobic. These areas pervade hip-hop, and in essence can perpetuate, and even normalize behaviors like these within the culture (Friend, 2018).
Concerning misogyny, women have been consistently over-sexualized in films and music and are often discussed in a derogatory manner (Peter & Valkenburg, 2007). Appreciating women enough to respect them for their minds, not just their bodies, would strengthen homes and allow men to share child-raising responsibilities more effectively with women. However, witnessing men curse and lie to women and leave them pregnant assumes the look of normal behavior. More women need to be represented in the media so they can be in charge of how they are viewed. Without more women in the media, they may take on personas that would further destroy the urban community in this patriarchal society. In a counter-parallel to women being over-sexualized in urban music, there is also an over-masculinization of young men of color.
Hip-hop music has made men feel they must be aggressive, promiscuous, and breadwinners. Moreover, they must be leaders who do not trust anyone and fight at the slightest
170 sign of disrespect. As a rule, Black and Brown youth are tried as adults in court than any other group (Peter &Valkenburg, 2007), and jail is often glorified in neighborhoods. These characteristics are not conducive to a thriving community. As a result, instead of discussing ways to grow, some Black and Brown youth tend to destroy each other, as well as people’s preferences for whom they choose to love.
In relation to homophobia, some men in the Black and Brown community cannot refer to being homosexual without clarifying themselves—that is, if one is trying to be vulnerable, one has to be mindful of the use of a double entendre or jokes. This upbringing of consistent joking that can be interpreted as homosexual may cause individuals to view actual homosexuals as a joke. In some ways, the Black and Brown community seems to push the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual,
Transgender, and Queer (LGBTQ) community beneath itself since the world already views Black and Brown people as low. This homophobia and degradation came from a process called buck- breaking, where Black men were raped by slave masters in the West Indies and America to shame and harm them physically and psychologically, as well as to send a message to children and women about how far the slave master will go to maintain control (Torrence, 2019). This centuries-long trauma has been so severe that if another individual, regardless of race, attempted to guide or care for urban youth, they subconsciously believed that individual had hidden motives. Some Black and Brown youth are unaccustomed to someone caring about them beyond their mother or significant other; so even if a male shows concern, Black and Brown youth feel uneasy and may begin to distance themselves.
Despite men being on high alert for any verbal signs of homosexual connotations, however, handshakes are moving increasingly closer every year for Black and Brown youth.
171 Hand gestures were typically two to four feet from one individual to the next, based on cultural preferences of space. In Black and Brown communities, men have been practically hugging each other when they have not seen each other for some time. The expression starts with a handshake, then the men move in more closely, allowing their shoulders to hit each other while still holding their right hands together. The left hand is then placed on the other person’s back so that the two are basically hugging each other with one arm. This act of care and compassion can make someone feel safe.
In contrast, when Black and Brown musicians articulate forms of violence or aggression in their music, some may interpret these individuals dangerous and malicious. In actuality, these lyrics assist musicians in not acting on violent impulses in real life. Critics witnessing Black and
Brown musicians express themselves lyrically, who do not understand the nuances of the culture, may not understand that these individuals may actually be undergoing a form of therapy by verbalizing their thoughts. Musicians should be celebrated for their honesty. If critics get caught up in something that makes them angry, then individuals miss the depth of the word play that hip hop artists exude. Their brilliance should be read before the superficial.
The superficial aspects of individuals should not be used to construct someone’s robust identity. This is not only done to musicians, but many Black and Brown individuals. Black and
Brown people grow weary of allowing society to define who our icons, leaders and heroes are.
If critics want to engage in a dialogue about what they find offensive or problematic about issues with guns in songs, etc.; then Black and Brown folk must be allowed to engage in that dialogue and be able to critique capitalism, gentrification, and institutions buying up land within Black
172 and Brown communities for the institutions gain. There must be a mutual deconstruction of who the musicians are, and who the critics are, or represent.
For Black and Brown citizens to begin to grow emotionally and spiritually in America,
America needs to assess who actually contributes to American culture, and what does that look like for the people who are part of it? A culture is made up of individuals who must understand themselves well enough to recognize any signs that they may not be cohesive with the mission of the group. Moving as a group is important. Especially for Black and Brown people whose deaths in America often occur without the individual at fault being reprimanded (Snow, 1974). If not, they may become nearly extinct in America, as occurred with the Native Americans (Cornell,
1990). Allowing students and teachers to interpret and perform rap battles allows individuals to express their concerns about themselves, as well as the group. Helping to inform others of leaks that may not have been observed by others in an entertaining and therapeutic format can help make everyone aware of one another’s thought process. This openness may lead to greater scientists, artists, and leaders. Scientists must be willing to collaborate, listen and not dismiss any particular subject, or else they may lose, or overlook important data that could benefit the overall goal of the group, and research.
Limitations of the Study
This was the first study incorporating battle pedagogy in a science classroom. This in itself was a limitation in my ability to find secondary research on the topic. Indeed, my own enthusiasm may have caused me to have a favorable view of the use of battle rap. Limitations of the study itself include several factors.
173 While students attended college in the Bronx, they would not be classified as “urban,” either racially or socio-economically. This by no means indicates that urban-ness or socio- economic deprivation is a constitution of urban-ness. There were also very few males in the course, although the science industry is mostly composed of males. This study was not representative of the gender which occupies the industry, nor was it representative of the full demographic of American college students. However, it does lend itself to existing research on the increasing numbers of women entering STEM courses and women who are pursuing STEM careers (Zeldind, Britner & Pajares, 2007). This study should only be considered valid for this environment.
Not all the battle rappers were vocal during the recording of their interviews but were more talkative off camera. This limited the amount of verbatim insight I could have gained from the battle rappers. However, through my extensive personal interactions with the battle rappers, which some were captured through audio recordings, significant insight into their thought process was obtained.
Future Research
Incorporating battle rap into STEM content at the post-secondary level is novel, therefore there a lot of areas that still need to be further understood. I hope to gain a better understanding of how battle rap affects individuals, communities and how aspects of battle rap can impact
STEM education.
In particular, for future research I am interested examining the effects of music artists incorporating STEM content into their lyrics and observing if it encourages more individuals to
174 learn more about STEM careers or various areas of the STEM field. I am also interested in learning more about the subtle cues battle rappers use to compose an engaging battle rap, and how those cues go into composing an engaging experience for viewers and ways teachers can acquire those skills through forms of teacher development. I want to further understand how students feel when they compose STEM battle raps, as well as understand more about how students feel about the interactions they have with their peers. I hope to create opportunities for students to compete against not only their classmates, but other classes, and even other institutions.
I would like to study these areas because I believe that incorporating aspects of battle rap into STEM education in varying ways may shed light on engagement techniques within the
STEM field. Being a resident of the U.S., the U.S. economies growth is important to me. One way the U.S. economy can grow is by improving STEM education so more individuals can enter prospective STEM jobs (National Science Board, 2014). The number of STEM jobs in the U.S. increases annually (Wyss, Heulskamp & Siebert, 2012), therefore maintaining student interest in
STEM should be essential.
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