Hip-hop-based calssrooms. (c2018)

Abstract

There is a rising need of integrating challenging and innovative teaching and learning approaches into the educational system. With my passion for hip-hop, I decided to conduct a study that measures students’ readiness and motivation to engage in a hip-hop based program that aims at providing students with strategies and assistance in learning their core subject matters. Hip-hop is an art movement that was originated from Bronx in New York. It can be used as an educational tool to promote creative writing, language acquisition, and critical thinking, among other pedagogical standards. Convenience sampling was used to select a school in the suburbs of Beirut as research site with sixty-eight participants of middle school and high school students. As a rapper myself, I conducted workshops in school to acquaint students with the notion of hip-hop and help them view it as a tool for learning. The study employed a mixed-methods approach that utilizes quantitative and qualitative instruments. The quantitative instrument, the Product Evaluation Rating Scale, measured student readiness for such a program, whereby students completed journal entries that were later rated. The qualitative instrument was an observation of students’ emotional and task-behavioral aspects as motivational indicators during program implementation. Data collection took place over a period of four months. To analyze the data, the rating forms were noted on a spreadsheet, and tables and graphs were extracted. The observations were coded under different motivational markers. Study findings indicate that the students are ready and motivated to be part of a hip-hop based program. The main limitation of this study is its sample size, which is not very representative. Consequently, future research is encouraged to take in a greater sample size to improve generalizability of findings to a wider student body.