Generation Hip Hop: Breakin', Hip Hop Pedagogy and Cultural Wealth


Description of Presentation: Most research on Hip Hop Pedagogy and Education is focused on utilizing rap music as a tool to engage and empower underrepresented students. There is a lack of research on how breakin’, an element of Hip Hop, can be used to develop a student’s cultural wealth. HHP and Yosso’s (2005) Cultural Wealth Model are used as a Conceptual Framework to link issues of race, gender, sexuality, social class and age, with the intent of empowering participants to overcome these issues. This study will explore how HHP, specifically through breakin’, is used by different chapters within the Generation Hip Hop organization to develop a participant’s cultural wealth.

Alignment with “Can’t Stop… Won’t Stop… Hip Hop Culture & Sport” Session: Cultural Wealth (Yosso, 2005) is linked to persistence in higher education, and possessing cultural wealth allows students to better navigate social institutions as well as identify, face and overcome inequality and discrimination. Generation Hip Hop, like Yosso (2005) views their participants/students with an anti-deficit lens, we do not see what they are lacking, but rather see what can be developed.