In this collection, scholars from the United States, Canada, and Australia examine the concepts of villainification and anti-villainification in social studies curriculum and popular culture, as well as within broader sociocultural contexts. Villainification is the process of identifying an individual or a small group of individuals as the sole…

In this paper, the authors analyze and discuss an initiative aimed at engaging urban youth who are traditionally disengaged in STEM. The initiative focuses on utilizing hip-hop as a tool for bridging the divides between urban high school students' culture and the culture of STEM disciplines. In lieu of traditional classroom assignments, students…

In this research article, Cati V. de los Ríos examines US-Mexican transnational youths' engagement with the Mexican musical genre corridos, border folk ballads, and its subgenre, narcocorridos, folk ballads that illuminate elements of the drug trade and often glamorize drug cartels. She draws from ethnographic methods to present empirical…

Purpose: Peer crowds are macro-level subcultures that share similarities across geographic areas. Over the past decade, dozens of studies have explored the association between adolescent peer crowds and risk behaviors, and how they can inform public health efforts. However, despite the interest, researchers have not yet reported on crowd size and…

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…

This study investigated the role of parental support and selected family variables in the first (L1) and second language (L2) vocabulary development of Japanese heritage language (JHL) high school students in the United States. Eighty-two JHL students ages 15-18 from eight hoshuukoo (i.e., supplementary academic schools for Japanese-speaking…

Although mounting evidence in Western nations indicates that entertainment media influence young people's sexual socialisation, virtually no research has addressed the topic in sub-Saharan Africa. The present study employed 14 focus groups of Ugandan high school students to identify media through which they were exposed to sexual content, how they…

Culturally relevant pedagogy is a framework that conceptualizes the process of student learning as contingent upon educators' deep understanding of students' cultural backgrounds to co-construct knowledge and develop academic skills. Concurrently, there are a growing number of studies that explore hip-hop as a culturally relevant curriculum for…

This empirical study investigates Chinese students' popular music preferences in daily life and to what extent and in what ways they prefer learning popular music in school in Shanghai, China. Data were drawn from questionnaires completed by 1,730 secondary students (aged 12-17) and interviews with 60 students from 10 secondary schools, between…

Paris examines texts worn on objects (like clothing or backpacks), delivered over electronic media, and rapped by youth emcees at a multiethnic high school. He argues that these are identity texts, used by young people to express ethnic and linguistic differences. (Contains 2 figures and 7 notes.)

In this article, the author discusses youth culture and raises concerns about the tricky social terrain modernity offers for youth identity. He discusses familiar "topoi" or thematics that seem to drive most work on youth culture, suggests that justice and fairness are moral imperatives, and that acknowledging the worthiness of difference is one…

Research historically has demonstrated that a generational disconnect between the popular cultures from which students and teachers define normative behavior can impact classroom management and student learning. The purpose of this study was to examine attitudes, beliefs and perceptions of high school faculty toward the hip-hop culture and its…

The richest nation of the world, the United States still struggles to graduate 50% of its Latina/o high school students. Nominal policy attention on this issue begs the need for bolder and more creative initiatives that call attention to this crisis. States, districts, and schools need to reconfigure this pedagogical crisis by leveraging all…

Using Critical Race and Latino Critical theories, this study examines 20 in-depth interviews conducted by the author with Mexican and Puerto Rican youth from the Chicago area. The author contends that youth utilized hip hop music in multiple and overlapping ways, engaging hip hop music as both a pedagogy that centers the perspectives of people of…

Hip hop culture is typically excluded from conventional educational spaces within the U.S. Drawing on the experiences of an educator who works with urban high school students and university level pre- and in-service educators, this article examines the role of hip hop culture for student engagement in two settings--an alternative high school…