In our schools, hip-hop culture is the dominant culture among the
students. In Youth Culture Power: A #HipHopEd Guide to Building
Teacher-Student Relationships and Increasing Student Engagement, Jason
D. Rawls and John Robinson, educators and hip-hop artists with
experience in the urban classrooms, focus their efforts through Hip-Hop
Based Education (HHBE). They argue that hip-hop culture could be useful
in building relationships and building student engagement.
The approach to achieve this is Youth Culture Pedagogy (YCP). YCP is
based in a foundation of reality pedagogy (Emdin, 2014), culturally
responsive pedagogy (Ladson-Billings, 1995), and HHBE (Hill, 2009;
Petchauer, 2009). In this volume, the authors lay the groundwork for YCP
and how they envision its use within the classroom.
In Youth Culture Power, the authors put forth their C.A.R.E. Model of
youth pedagogy to help teachers create a positive learning environment
by building relationships and lessons around students' own culture.
Instead of forcing students to give up the things they frequent, Rawls
and Robinson feel teachers should discuss them and when possible, use
them in lessons. The purpose of this book is to present a fresh take on
why educators should not discount the culture of youth within the
classroom.