This essay outlines how Black placemaking, a sociological framework used to study Black residents in urban contexts, might be used to study Black students' experiences at historically White institutions (HWIs) of higher education. Black placemaking engages with the intersection of Blackness, place, structure, and agency. The author argues that…

This rich, arts- and spatial-thinking-integrated project examined the effects of making three-dimensional dioramas of traditional African cultures on Black fifth graders at an urban school on students' racial identities, knowledge of cultural universals, and spatial thinking skills. Pretest and posttest attitudes measured with the Multidimensional…

Despite growing interest in culturally responsive pedagogy (CRP), little research has examined its effect on student performance. In this article, we place CRP in a sociohistorical context and document how one intervention, Fresh Prep, draws on CRP to engage and instruct high school students identified as high risk for not graduating. Using a…

This article revisits the central impulse behind early advocacy for ethnographic approaches to hip hop--that critics should try as much as possible to limit their own certainties around what hip hop can and might mean. While ethnographic approaches can engender the kinds of personal dislocations that allow for this negotiation, they do not…

Throughout this article, I argue that within the mainstream field of urban education, "the urban" is floating face down, lifeless, and devoid of significant meaning. "City" and "urban" function as taken-for-granted variables that stand in the rightful place of rich explanations, based in theory and evidence, of the…

This article explores how speculative civic literacies can support youth engagement in policy discourse in digital and analog contexts. We broaden the scope of civic literacies by emphasizing core principles of Afrofuturism and participatory culture. Articulating a specific framework for applying these principles to contemporary conceptions of…

One fundamental breakthrough in the field of hip-hop education in recent years is the shift from understanding hip-hop solely as content to understanding hip-hop also as aesthetic form. In this article, I chart the roots of this shift across disciplines and focus on what it might mean for the future of hip-hop education, pedagogy, and research in…

Hip-Hop-Based Education (HHBE) has resulted in many positive educational outcomes, ranging from teaching academic skills to teaching critical reflection at secondary levels. Given what HHBE initiatives have accomplished, it is troubling that there is an absence of attention to these methods in education programs for elementary and early childhood…

The present article draws from the biographical narratives of three South African high school female principals which are part of a larger research study in which 26 aspiring and practicing women school leaders were interviewed. Narratives were constructed from in-depth interviews with each participant and analyzed for themes that provided…

Although the number of calls to integrate Hip-Hop culture into school curricula is growing, little attention is being paid to the reluctance of teachers and administrators to forge relationships between the cultures of school and of youth. This article explores some of the difficulties inherent in the relationships between Hip Hop and schooling,…

The author argues in this speech that one cannot expect students in the school system to know and understand the genius of Black history if the curriculum is Eurocentric, which is a residue of racism. He states that his comments are designed for the enlightenment of those who suffer from a school system that "hypocritically manipulates Black…

Investigated the representation of people of African ancestry in grade school music materials. Examination of nearly 70 years of songbooks (1930-1995) from one publisher's series determined that the books are saturated with negative, racist stereotypes and that such representations most likely impact children negatively as they read and sing. (SM)

Describes the kuona process of skill development, which teaches conceptualization from a cultural, political, spiritual, and liberating perspective (rooted in African culture) and fosters self reliance and self determination to promote social change in African Americans. Examines the process of conceptualization, the formation of the kuona…

Examines aspects of an African-centered pedagogy that should let children understand their identities as people of African heritage. Data are from an ethnographic study of "liberatory" pedagogy that was used by four black women teachers. Three vignettes illustrate liberatory practice as it explicitly addresses issues that are often…

This article examines a decade or more of scholarly and popular writings that blame the persistence of racial inequality in educational performance primarily, if not exclusively, on the cultural inheritance of African Americans. This article focuses in part on the ways in which contemporary rationales for educational inequality are linked to a…