Your favourite authors favourite authors: a bibliometric social network analysis of hip-hop education literature
-
Marti Cason
,
Jamaal Young
and
Jemimah Young
Abstract
Hip-hop culture can be found globally, and hip-hop educators can be found in these same spaces. Therefore, hip-hop has been in classrooms and has been increasingly popular in a multitude of disciplines, including but not limited to health sciences, sociology, and education. Given the vast reach of hip-hop education research, a logical next step is to characterize the impact of hip-hop education scholarship using bibliometrics. We examined hip-hop education through the lens of bibliometrics and social network analysis (SNA). A pool of 371 studies was identified for citation analysis. The findings of this study contribute to the literature by characterizing the development of hip-hop education research. Specifically, we contribute to the field by: (1) identifying key scholarly contributions in hip-hop education and the linkages among them, (2) tracing the evolution of the field over time, (3) analyzing the impact of hip-hop on the field of education, and (4) exploring the cross-disciplinary role of hip-hop education research. Implications are provided for future research and praxis to support learners in urban spaces.
I’m past patiently waitin’/I’m passionately smashin’ every expectation/Every action’s an act of creation!/I’m laughin’ in the face of casualties and sorrow/For the first time, I’m thinkin’ past tomorrow.
– Hamilton, My Shot
In 2015, we saw the rise of Hamilton, a Broadway musical that used rap heavily throughout the show and demonstrated the power of hip-hop. “My Shot” was one of the first tracks Lin Manuel Miranda wrote for the Hamilton Mixtape. Within the lyrics, Miranda aimed to show the complexities of Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton takes his shot at Aaron Burr to ensure he is not elected president of the United States and later so that he loses his election for governor of New York. Ultimately, Hamilton is killed by Burr’s shot. In the telling of Hamilton, Miranda reimagined the beginnings of the United States historically and culturally. Hamilton saw the potential of the United States. We chose this quote to exhibit the reimagining of educational spaces through hip-hop.
When confronted with hip-hop, many in the dominant culture tend to think about rap music – and only that which has been widely publicized through popular media outlets. Rapping (MC-ing), DJ-ing, breakdancing (b-boying/b-girling), and graffiti make up the core elements of hip-hop culture (Chang 2005, 2006; KRS One 2009; Wheeler et al. 2016). While a fifth element often cited within the hip-hop community is knowledge or knowledge of self (Baszile 2009; Emdin 2013). Other elements that have been added, yet remain outside of the core tenets, include fashion, beatboxingg, spoken word poetry, street language, entrepreneurialism, and activism (Chang 2006; Petchauer 2009). These elements combine to create a lived experience in which artistic expression takes center stage in forming the beliefs and customs of hip-hop culture.
Hip-hop culture can be found across the globe, and hip-hop educators can be found in these same spaces. The global presence of hip-hop culture is evident through its musical influence, international festivals, diverse styles, educational initiatives, online communities, iconic artists, language adaptations, and academic recognition. For example, the presence of international hip-hop festivals showcases the global reach of hip-hop culture. Events like the Hip-Hop Camp in the Czech Republic and the B-Sides Festival in Switzerland attract artists and fans worldwide (Fernandes 2011). Appropriately, academic institutions around the world have recognized the cultural significance of hip-hop. Universities offer courses and programs dedicated to studying hip hop as a cultural phenomenon globally. This widespread impact reinforces the idea that hip-hop educators can be found across the globe.
Hip-hop has been in classrooms and has been rising in educational research. Hip-hop educators are looking to defy expectations, while hip-hop education scholars seek acceptance and validation as a viable, reliable, and sustainable line of inquiry. Hip-hop in the classroom is important for promoting cultural relevance, student engagement, creative expression, and breaking stereotypes. Incorporating hip-hop into classrooms acknowledges and celebrates the cultural relevance of this art form, making education more relatable and engaging for students from diverse backgrounds (Cherfas et al. 2021). Hip-hop’s dynamic and expressive nature captures students’ attention, fostering increased engagement in the learning process. This can lead to a more positive and participatory classroom environment (Meacham et al. 2018). As a creative means of expression, hip-hop provides an alternative avenue for self-expression that may resonate with those who may not connect with traditional academic methods. Moreover, the efforts of hip-hop educators to defy expectations contribute to breaking stereotypes associated with the genre (Hill 2009). This challenges preconceived notions about the educational value of hip-hop and promotes a more inclusive and open-minded educational environment. Hip-hop also offers cognitive benefits, fosters community-school connections, and accommodates diverse learning styles.
The availability of hip-hop education research in academic journals increased during the 2000s. At the same time, hip-hop itself was shifting. Kanye West was pushed into the spotlight as he moved from producer to rapper. While appearing on a nationally broadcasted telethon, he called out the racism in how the media portrayed Black Americans during Hurricane Katrina (Chang 2021). Missy Elliott became an international star with the release of three albums in three years. Southern hip hop gained a national audience, with rappers such as Ludacris, T.I., and Three 6 Mafia becoming mainstream. As hip-hop evolved into an inner-generational and cross-cultural phenomenon, educators began to ponder the potential of utilizing hip-hop as an instructional medium. In the 2010s, movements such as #HipHopEd, which started as a Twitter chat, created a collective of researchers and educators who would move the field further within educational spaces. As streaming and music sharing sites became popular, artists such as Post Malone, Migos, and 21 Savage were discovered by sharing their music through SoundCloud. We share this evolution of hip-hop as a means to simultaneously unpack the parallel emergence of hip-hop education research and scholarship with the evolution of hip-hop.
Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-Hop Generation, published in 2005, was written by hip-hop journalist Jeff Chang. While Chang chronicles the rise of the hip-hop generation, he offers no limitations on who to include. In the introduction, DJ Kool Herc poses the question, “Do we realize how much power hip-hop has?” (p. xii). In 2015, we saw the power of hip-hop on the Broadway stage with the release of Hamilton, where Lin Manuel Miranda reimagined the beginnings of the United States both historically and culturally. Just like Miranda, researchers within the hip-hop education field seek to reimagine educational spaces through hip-hop. By viewing hip-hop education research through a quantitative lens, we can begin to chronicle the diffusion of knowledge within the field. Hence, the primary goal of the present study was to characterize the scholarly impact of hip-hop education through the empirical lens of bibliometrics.
1 Background
Urban culture is sometimes thought to be synonymous with hip-hop culture, which is often viewed in direct contrast to school culture (Emdin and Lee 2012). As indicated by Osumare (2001), hip-hop appeals to youth across the globe, particularly those who have been pushed to the margins of society, and it serves as an outlet for those who are oppressed and want to share their experiences. Hip-Hop Pedagogy is a cultural lens that teachers apply to inform lesson planning and instruction in the classroom, where cultural elements of hip-hop are integrated with subject area content to engage students more authentically and heighten their learning experience in the classroom. Adjapong and Emdin (2015) defined Hip-Hop Pedagogy as a way of authentically and practically incorporating the creative elements of hip-hop into teaching, and inviting students to connect with the content while meeting them on their cultural turf by teaching to, and through their realities and experiences. (p. 67)
Prier and Beachum (2008) maintained that research and scholarship in education must look to hip-hop culture as a framework for developing critical discourses since hip-hop culture is a vehicle for youth to develop their identity and negotiate their sense of self. Emdin and Lee (2012) indicated that youth who have been marginalized can share their stories and create history through hip-hop artifacts. Unfortunately, educators who are not familiar with hip-hop culture do not understand the significance of these artifacts, so they do not see hip-hop as valuable when making educational decisions. Similarly, scholars unfamiliar with hip-hop education often share similar sentiments regarding the scholarly significance of hip-hop education scholarship. Despite this disconnect, hip-hop education research has exploded as an interdisciplinary line of inquiry.
Hip-hop Education has grown substantially and continues to inform instruction across multiple disciplines. Hip-hop Education has diversified and expanded its influence, reaching beyond traditional music classes to impact various disciplines including but not limited to Language Arts and Literature, History and Social Studies, and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Teachers incorporate hip-hop lyrics into language arts lessons to teach literary devices, poetry, and creative writing (Hall 2017). Likewise, social studies educators use hip-hop to explore historical and social issues, incorporating the genre as a lens to discuss cultural and political events (Gosine and Tabi 2016). More recently, educational rap songs and competitions such as the “science genius battles” have created space to teach mathematics and science concepts through hip-hop, making learning fun and accessible (Adjapong 2019). However, there remains a need to characterize the empirical influence of Hip-hop Education research by quantifying its impact across the literature. Although several systematic reviews of Hip-hop Education research exist (see Petchauer 2009), these studies fail to provide measurable indicators of the impact of Hip-hop Education on the field of education and the magnitude of the empirical influences of Hip-hop Education on other fields. These data are essential to the evolution and sustainability of Hip-hop Education research within mainstream academic spaces. At this point, it would be remiss not to acknowledge that gaining mainstream approval is not a goal of Hip-hop Education, however just as hip-hop had to evolve to transcend from the streets of New York to a global phenomenon, Hip-hop Education researchers and research must evolve and be measured by the tools of the academy.
In the documentary “Hip Hop Genius: Remixing High School Education,” Seidel et al. (2022) indicated that hip-hop is more than just rap music; it is a way of living. Thus, many urban youths connect to hip-hop culture because it reflects their world, as it highlights the challenges faced by low-income communities while at the same time reflecting on their resourcefulness. Appropriately, many educators recently became interested in ways to integrate elements of hip-hop into their classrooms as a way to engage students who identify with hip-hop culture (Baszile 2009; Emdin 2010, 2016; Hill and Petchauer 2013). Khalifa (2013) explains that students with hip-hop identities are at greater risk for marginalization in classrooms because their behaviors do not match those of the dominant culture. By incorporating hip-hop into the curriculum, educators can facilitate authentic classroom engagement for students, which has emerged as an important pedagogical pathway for innovative teaching and learning. Unfortunately, as an academic discipline, Hip-Hop Education remains on the margins as many members of the scholarly community have yet to recognize this line of inquiry as meaningful. We argue that this absence of scholarly acceptance is due in part to a lack of documented evidence of Hip-hop Education’s academic footprint.
Research in hip-hop culture and pedagogy is relatively young. However, as a line of inquiry, the field is growing exponentially. Hill and Petchauer (2013) indicated some teachers are interested in and are actively implementing Hip-hop Pedagogies in their classrooms, yet widely available resources for the implementation of hip-hop curriculum and pedagogy have yet to be realized. Contemporary media spaces are powerful resources for educators to connect with youth enamored with the virtual (Dimitriadis and Bae-Dimitriadis 2009). As classrooms evolve to include elements of hip-hop in the curriculum, research offering support and resources for teachers is necessary to develop pedagogical knowledge that will enhance student experiences. In this way, Hip-hop Education research has transcended the K-12 realm and can be found within medical education and other non-traditional education spaces (Crooke et al. 2020; Robinson et al. 2018). Given the vast reach of Hip-hop Education research, a logical next step is to characterize the impact of the Hip-hop Education scholarship using bibliometrics.
2 Purpose statement
Empirical impact can be measured using a variety of metrics. However, given the cross-disciplinary nature of hip-hop education, we argue that the metric of choice should be objective and recognized as a measure of importance across disciplines. According to Moravcsik (1977), publication impact is measured by the influence of one’s work on subsequent publications (i.e., the influence of a publication is related to the citation of the paper in future studies). Here, we argue that by examining citation frequency patterns and relationships across studies, we can further explicate the impact of hip-hop education across multiple disciplines and research communities.
In the present study, we examine hip-hop education through the lens of bibliometrics and social network analysis (SNA). Agarwal et al. (2016) state, “Bibliometrics is the process of extracting measurable data through statistical analysis of published research studies and how the knowledge within a publication is used” (p. 297). A subset of bibliometric analysis is citation analysis, which provides quantitative data that measures the impact of scholarship. The co-citation and SNA then add context to examine citations cited in different scholarly works. SNA further explains the connections and impact present between researchers and scholars. Glegg et al. (2019) indicate that SNA goes beyond looking simply at how researchers are connected to examining the structural properties of the network, which allows us to provide implications for empirical and social action within the field.
3 Methods
The present study was conducted in four steps. The first step was the selection of source documents. This step was initialized by a keyword search of the Web of Science Core Collection using the keyword combinations of “hip-hop” education OR “hip-hop” pedagog* OR “hip-hop” teach* OR “hip-hop learn*.” Each researcher then reviewed the initial pool of documents for inclusion based on the following criteria.
Documents’ purpose or aim concerned the integration of hip-hop to promote learning or behavior changes.
Documents’ cited references were accessible.
The document was a peer-reviewed article.
After reviewing all references and abstracts individually, the researchers met to reconcile discrepancies through discussion until 100 % agreement was reached. This process reduced the initial pool of studies from 376 to a final count of (N = 280) studies that were deemed relevant for inclusion and further analysis. The entire research process is chronicled in Figure 1.
Four-step study design process.
3.1 Citation analysis
Through citation analysis, we sought to identify the contributions of foundational texts in hip-hop education by exploring citation frequency trends. To determine the most influential documents, we first sorted the included documents in decreasing order of citation frequency and found that a cut-off of 10 citations captured the upper quartile of the dataset. Then, citation frequencies were normalized by dividing the citation frequency by the average number of citations for the group. This normalized citation frequency quantifies the relationship between individual document frequency and average frequency to provide a practical measure of comparative magnitude. For instance, a normalized frequency of 2 would indicate that the document was cited two times the mean citation frequency of the group.
We were also interested in the relationship between citation frequency and publication frequency as a function of the relative impact. Specifically, as the number of articles in Hip-hop Education increases the number of citations should also increase in theory because newly published studies should cite prior studies in the field. However, we acknowledge that this relationship is also subject to the assumption that the “vintage effect” is not a statistically significant moderator of citation frequency trends.
The final analysis conducted during the citation analysis process was a disciplinary citation frequency categorization. Here, we examined the citation frequency trends across disciplines identified in the Web of Science database. To maximize objectivity and minimize potential bias, the Web of Science categories were used to organize the citation trends across discipline categories. Using this strategy, 46 Web of Science categories were included in the discipline citation analysis.
3.2 Co-citation analysis
The co-citation analysis procedures were designed to support the description of the linkages between key documents in the Hip-hop Education discipline and to identify the major thematic trends in the Hip-hop Education literature. By definition, documents are considered co-cited when they appear together in the reference lists of other documents. For instance, if document X contains a reference to document Y and document Z, then Y and Z are co-cited by document X. Co-citation is important to the present study because it can be used to examine the intellectual knowledge organization of Hip-hop Education research. According to Small (1973), co-citation reflects five different kinds of relations. Three co-citation relations are key to the present study: (1) co-citations can reveal relationships or connections that are strongly recognized by members of the Hip-hop Education scholarly community, (2) co-citations may represent “semantic” relationships between cited documents, and (3) co-citations can identify core/seminal works in Hip-hop Education.
In the present study, we identify the links in the network as co-citations to other documents. To establish the most representative and influential linkages in the field, we only included documents with at least ten citations, moreover this decision coincided with the process completed in the citation analysis. After setting our minimum citation parameters, we utilized VOSviewer to develop the citation patterns’ bibliometric map and calculate the total link strength for the documents in the citation network. A bibliometric map of document co-citation patterns was produced using VOSviewer. We used the visualization of similarities or VOS mapping technique (Van Eck and Waltman 2007) to construct our co-citation bibliometric map.
The VOS mapping technique is based on the similarity matrix (van Eck and Waltman 2009). The similarity matrix is created by adjusting the co-occurrence matrix for differences in the total number of occurrences or co-occurrences of items. This process is referred to as normalizing the similarity data. To normalize the similarity data, the Jaccard index is considered the most popular index; however, VOSviewer uses association strength or proximity index, which, according to Van Eck and Waltman, has some advantages over the Jaccard index. The association strength between two items i and j represents the number of co-occurrences (i.e., co-citations) of documents i and j and represents the total number of occurrences of the i and j or the total number of co-occurrences. The co-citation map generated by VOSviewer is then based on the similarity matrix. After an initial review of the bibliometric map connections, it was determined that not all of the included documents were connected. Thus two documents were removed to establish the largest set of connected documents. Finally, based on the co-citation structure of the documents, related document clusters were generated to identify thematic trends in the literature.
3.3 Social network analysis
We then conducted a social network analysis (SNA) based on the bibliometric co-citation map generated by VOSviewer. The SNA was conducted to model the magnitude and nature of the influence of particular documents on the field. The network data generated by VOSviewer were then exported to Social Network Visualizer (SocNetV) version 2.8 to complete the analysis. In the present study, we use SNA to examine the structure, relationships, and impacts of co-cited documents using three measures of centrality or influence. These three measures (degree centrality, betweenness centrality, and closeness centrality) are often characterized as analogs to the three traditional measures of central tendency (i.e., mode, median, and mean). Appropriately, these measures represent measures of “center” within the SNA context. The degree centrality measure represents the number of direct connections between actors (i.e., documents). This measure of direct influences ranges from 0 to n − 1, where n represents the total number of actors or, in our case, documents. For instance, if there are ten documents in the network, the maximum value for degree centrality would be 9. Intuitively this makes sense given that a document could not be connected to itself within the network. Thus, degree centrality is often considered to be analogous to the mode. The second measure examined was betweenness centrality, which is the number of times an individual occurs on the shortest path length between two other actors in the network. Hence, betweenness centrality is compared to the median measure of central tendency. We also examined the closeness centrality or the normalized mean path length from an actor to all other actors in the network. Finally, we examined the eigenvector centrality, which measures an actor’s connections to influential actors in the network. This could be described as a measure of “who you know” in the network.
4 Results
4.1 Citation analysis results
The first measure of the impact of Hip-Hop Pedagogy research examined was citation frequency across the most highly cited documents. In Table 1 we present the citation frequency data for the most cited documents within the Hip-Hop Pedagogy research base. Our Web of Science search review and exclusion process resulted in a pool of 280 documents with an acute emphasis on Hip-Hop Pedagogy. The total number of citations attributed to Hip-Hop Pedagogy scholarship in the Web of Science was 2,888. Of these 280 documents, 66 met the threshold of having at least 10 citations. The top ten most cited documents are presented in Table 1, listed in descending order based on citation frequency. Citations were normalized by dividing the citation count of each document by the mean number of citations for the pool of studies. It is important to note that data in Table 1 represent documents from the Web of science, which only includes peer-reviewed articles. The highest cited document was Ladson-Billings’s 2014 article “Culturally Relevant Pedagogy 2.0: a.k.a. the Remix”. This article argues that it is time for scholars to expand and adapt Dr. Ladson-Billings’s earlier conceptualization of culturally relevant teaching to address the current classroom environment. Specifically, Ladson-Billings espouses these changes to help incorporate the emergent educational trends surrounding Hip-Hop Pedagogy and Hip-Hop Education.
Most cited documents on Hip-Hop Pedagogy research by Web of Science.
| Author | Citations | Normalized citations |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Ladson-billings (2014) | 371 | 8.00 |
| 2. Ibrahim (1999) | 153 | 3.30 |
| 3. Khalifa et al. (2016) | 143 | 3.08 |
| 4. Robinson et al. (2010) | 107 | 2.31 |
| 5. Fitzgibbon et al. (2011) | 102 | 2.20 |
| 6. Stovall (2006) | 89 | 1.92 |
| 7. Sisson et al. (2016) | 82 | 1.77 |
| 8. Monasta et al. (2011) | 79 | 1.70 |
| 9. Williams & Noble (2008) | 68 | 1.47 |
| 10. Ling et al. (2016) | 68 | 1.47 |
The Ladson-Billings (2014) article was cited 371 times, based on the normalized citation rate; her article was cited 8 times more than the average number of citations per article. Rounding out the top five documents cited in descending order are Ibrahim (1999) and Khalifa et al. (2016), and Fitzgibbon et al. (2011). It is also important to note that only the top three documents cited were published in education-related venues. The Robinson et al. and Fitzgibbon et al. articles were both published in medical sciences journals, thus emphasizing the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary nature of Hip-Hop Pedagogy. It is also notable that Dr. Petchauer has the most documents (three first-authored documents) on the most cited list, followed by Dr. Love with two articles.
The second indicator of Hip-Hop Pedagogy’s scholarly impact is longitudinal citation and publication trends. Citation trends for Hip-Hop Pedagogy scholarship are inconsistent and relatively low early on from 1998 until around 2008, where there is steady growth in citation frequency until 2011. In the subsequent years, 2012 and 2013, there was a sharp decline in citation frequency before an explosion in 2014, followed by a drop in 2015 and one more strong year in 2016. The most recent data reported in the present study indicate that the citation of Hip-Hop Pedagogy scholars has remained less than 100 citations per year over four years. This stagnation has occurred despite the publication of between 20 and 40 documents per year from 2016 until 2020. Please see Figure 2 for a complete summary of the publication and citation frequency trends.
Publication and citation frequency for Hip-Hop Pedagogy research from 1998 to 2020.
The third indicator of citation impact on the research field examined was citation frequency across disciplines. Appropriately, the majority of the citations of Hip-hop Pedagogical research were cited in Educational Research venues, (42.14 %), followed by Music (8.57 %), Social Science (5.71 %), Public, Environmental & Occupational Health (3.93 %), and Psychology (3.57 %). The remaining research areas garnered less than 10 citations per category however Hip-hop Pedagogical scholarship was cited in 46 distinct disciplines recognized by the Web of Science. The top ten disciplines are presented in descending order of citation frequency in Table 2.
Citation frequency for Hip-Hop Pedagogy by Web of Science research discipline.
| Discipline | Record count | Percentage |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Education & educational research | 118 | 42.14 % |
| 2. Music | 24 | 8.57 % |
| 3. Social sciences – other topics | 16 | 5.71 % |
| 4. Public, environmental & occupational health | 11 | 3.93 % |
| 5. Psychology | 10 | 3.57 % |
| 6. Neurosciences & neurology | 9 | 3.21 % |
| 7. Communication | 8 | 2.86 % |
| 8. Linguistics | 7 | 2.50 % |
| 9. Arts & humanities – other topics | 6 | 2.14 % |
| 10. Ethnic studies | 6 | 2.14 % |
4.2 Co-citation analysis results
The second aim of this study was to examine the links and structure present between the top-cited documents in Hip-Hop Pedagogy research. Document co-citation identifies groups of documents in Hip-Hop Pedagogy scholarship that are cited together, which helps to explain the relationship between them. VOSviewer was used to create a visual display and then map the structure of highly cited Hip-Hop Pedagogy research. Three distinct clusters were identified using VOSviewer; the cluster-wise separation of the documents is presented in Table 3 with only the first five authors presented for brevity.
Co-cation clusters and mean citation frequencies for Hip-Hop Pedagogy scholarship.
| Cluster | Documents | Mean citation frequency |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1. Alim (2011) 2. Emdin (2010) 3. Emdin (2010) 4. Emdin (2016) 5. Gaunt (2006) |
14.93(8.19) |
| 2 | 1. Alim (2006)
2. Alim (2007) 3. Dimitriadis (2001) 4. Kitwana (2002) 5. Ladson-Billings (1994) |
18.00(7.84) |
| 3 | 1. Akom (2009) 2. Bazile (2009) 3. Chang (2005) 4. Dyson (2007) 5. Forman & Neal (2004) |
19.31(14.24) |
Cluster 1 includes 15 items, including 7 books and 8 articles. The document publication years range from 1995 to 2015. However, the majority of the items were published between 2009 and 2015. Additionally, four scholars have multiple documents located in cluster 1 (i.e., Christopher Emdin, Marc Lamont Hill, Gloria Ladson-Billings, and Django Paris) The books include Urban Science Education for the Hip-Hop Generation, For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood … and the Rest of Y’all Too: Reality Pedagogy and Urban Education, Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life: Hip-Hop Pedagogy and the Politics of Identity, Schooling Hip-Hop: Expanding Hip-Hop Based Education Across the Curriculum, Hip Hop’s Li’l Sistas Speak: Negotiating Hip Hop Identities and Politics in the New South, Slam School: Learning Through Conflict in the Hip-Hop and Spoken Word Classroom. The mean citation frequency was 14.93, the lowest mean citation frequency observed for the clusters. This first cluster is best described as the core “Hip-Hop Pedagogy and Education Texts”, as these are most closely aligned to what are considered foundation texts in the field.
Cluster 2 includes 14 documents. The documents’ years of publication ranged from 1994 to 2013, with most of the documents being published before 2007. Most of the documents in this cluster are books, 9(60 %). Only Alim has multiple documents in this cluster. These documents are distinctly different from the documents in cluster 1, as these documents tend to be less about Hip-Hop Pedagogy and education and more representative of issues and characteristics related to hip-hop, with the exception of Ladson-Billing’s, Dream Keepers. For instance, Alim (2006), Roc the Mic Right: The Language of Hip-hop Culture explores the role of language within hip-hop culture. While Schloss (2014) explores the goals, methods, and culture of beat making within hip-hop. Together, these documents have a mean citation frequency of 18.00. These texts are best described as “hip-hop background or pure hip-hop culture texts”. Again, except for Ladson-Billings (1994), which seems to represent an outlier within the cluster.
The final cluster consists of 13 documents – the documents in cluster 3 range in the year of publication from 1994 until 2011. Rose is the only author to contribute to multiple documents in cluster 3. Eight out of the 13 documents in cluster 3 were books. This cluster is best described as the “Framework Building Hip-Hop Pedagogy and Education” cluster. This description was chosen because of the inclusion of multiple texts that present important educational or hip-hop frameworks to include: Pedagogy of the Oppressed, Can’t Stop won’t Stop: A history of the Hip-hop Generation, Know what I Mean?: Reflections on hip-hop, and That’s the joint!: the hip-hop studies reader. The mean citation frequency for this cluster is the highest at 19.31.
4.3 Social network analysis results
In social network analysis, centrality is a measure of who or what is most important in the network. There are multiple forms of centrality. In the present study, we focused on the most popular in practice: degree centrality, closeness centrality, and Eigenvector centrality. In social network analysis, the unit of analysis is the actor. Here we are focused on Hip-Hop Pedagogy scholarship documents. The degree centrality measures the number of connections an actor has in the network. This can be equated to the mode of a data set. The degree centrality is measured on a scale from 0 to 1 for interpretation, but raw values can range from 0 to n − 1, where n is the number of actors. The top 10 actors in the Hip-Hop Pedagogy scholarship based on degree centrality. Four documents have a degree centrality of 41 and a standardized degree centrality of 1. Chang (2005), Hill (2009) and Petchauer (2009) all had a degree centrality of 41, which indicates that the documents were connected to (i.e., cited in) all of the other actors (i.e., documents) in the network (note. an actor cannot be connected to itself, thus the n − 1 term). Overall, the top ten actors were highly connected in the network, with centrality percentages ranging from 87.80 to 100 %. The mean degree centrality was (M = 0.79, SD = 0.13). Because the mean degree centrality is close to 1, we can conclude that the individual actors have a noticeable direct influence on the network.
The second measure of centrality is closeness centrality. The closeness centrality represents the average of the shortest distance between actors. This can be thought of as a measure of indirect influence. Similar to the previous measure of centrality, closeness centrality is also standardized to a range of 0–1 to support comparison across centrality measures. The top five actors in terms of centrality were Chang, Hill, Petchauer, Stovall, and Rose. The mean closeness centrality was M = 0.83 (SD = 0.02). The mean closeness centrality estimate is large and close to one, which indicates a considerable influence of closeness centrality within the network.
The final measure of centrality examined was eigenvector centrality. This form of centrality corresponds to an actor’s connections to other highly influential actors. Like the other measures of centrality presented earlier, eigenvector centrality is also standardized to values between 0 and 1. The data in the present study for eigenvector centrality are very similar to the other forms of centrality; specifically, the top four actors are the same. The mean eigenvector centrality was M = 0.15(SD = 0.00).
4.4 Citation trends and contributions of foundational Hip-Hop Pedagogy texts
The citation analysis results revealed that Hip-Hop Pedagogy is an emergent yet thriving line of research, as evidenced by the nearly 3,000 citations recorded, despite being in its infancy compared to other research lines within education. Our data indicate that the publication and citation frequency trends tend to be relatively in sync, and both reflect an upward trend with some increases and decreases present across the period observed. It is important to note that since 2016, citation frequencies have decreased dramatically despite strong publication trends. Nonetheless, Hip-Hop Pedagogy is influential across numerous disciplines, as seen in the variety of disciplines represented in the disciplinary citation frequency data. Appropriately, education and educational research were the most represented disciplines representing 42.14 % of disciplinary citations. In summary, the data indicate that Hip-Hop Pedagogy has a substantial influence on research trends within and beyond educational research.
Citation trends are typically not distributed evenly across texts in most disciplines. In the present study, five texts comprise a substantial portion of the citations within Hip-Hop Pedagogy (i.e., Fitzgibbon et al. 2011; Ibrahim 1999; Khalifa et al. 2016; Ladson-billings 2014). Together, these texts represent more than thirty percent (30.33 %) of the citations accredited to Hip-Hop Pedagogical research. Moreover, these texts were all peer-reviewed articles, despite a large, and well-known tradition of scholarly books in Hip-Hop in general.
5 Discussion
The fifth element of hip-hop is knowledge of self. Through this bibliometric quantitative analysis, we characterized the impact of Hip-hop Education our current scholarly knowledge base. Because it is important to interrogate how we are developing as a research field. The basic questions we sought to answer were: “Is our work in Hip-Hop education research being cited?” and “Which published works are driving our field forward?” By understanding the knowledge structure of Hip-Hop Education research, our hope was to be better able to examine how to expand within and beyond our field.
The findings of our study provide tangible evidence of Hip-hop Education’s scholarly impact. Specifically, we contribute to the field by: (1) identifying key scholarly contributions in Hip-hop Education and the linkages among them, (2) tracing the evolution of the field over time, (3) analyzing the impact of Hip-hop Education on the field, and (4) exploring the cross-disciplinary impact of Hip-hop Education research on other academic disciplines. However, our analysis also reveals challenges, such as the relatively low number of citations for most hip-hop education research.
Our results indicate that 2016 was a monumental year for Hip-Hop education research as we observed a substantial rise in Hip-hop Education research publication as seen in the Web of Science. Surprisingly, there was a significant drop in citations in 2017 of Hip-hop Education research, and citations have continued to decrease while research publication frequency remains relatively consistent. There are multiple plausible explanations, but the most likely are that there were limited new developments in the field, citation practices, and the cyclical nature of research trends.
For instance, if there were limited new contributions, innovations, or significant developments in the field of Hip-hop education in 2017, it could lead to a decline in citations. Alternatively, a lack of emphasis on citing existing Hip-hop education works in 2017, leading to a decline in citations. Finally, academic research often experiences cyclical trends where specific topics gain popularity for a period and then decline. The drop in citations could be part of a natural cycle within the field. Nonetheless, this decline suggests that Hip-hop Education scholars must prioritize purposeful citation practices as to ensure the maintenance of Hip-hop education as fixture in the education research literature. Since we used only Web of Science in our search, we were limited in the type of publication and only those publications since 1998 until the first quarter of 2021 when we conducted our search. Regardless of limitations, analysis of this set of data provides valuable insight into the hip hop education field.
This calls for a concerted effort within the scholarly community to prioritize purposeful citation practices, ensuring the continued presence of hip-hop education in the education research literature. As hip-hop scholars, educators, and researchers, we must actively contribute to the growth and sustainability of Hip-hop Education, recognizing its cultural significance and transformative power. Thus, we hope this study provides an adequate characterization of the impact of Hip-hop Education as an influential and sustainable academic discipline. Through the lens of citation analysis, we have identified key works and scholars that have shaped the discourse, emphasizing the need for continued support and recognition.
As we progress in our research, we must consider how we utilize hip-hop as a bridge between the classroom and real-life experiences so that the classroom community and the communities they serve are no longer seen as wholly separate. In his book Hip Hop Genius: Remixing High School Education, Sam Seidel looks at the High School for the Recording Arts to examine how Hip-hop Education can be used to rethink the teaching and learning experience we are giving our students. Hip-hop Education provides a means to break down the perceived barriers between the classroom and real-life experiences. It encourages educators to rethink traditional approaches and embrace innovative strategies that resonate with the cultural realities of students. As we delve further into understanding the impact of hip-hop on education, it becomes evident that its broader applications extend far beyond the confines of a typical classroom, enriching the educational experience for both students and educators alike.
6 Conclusions
Hip-hop scholars have taken up residence in universities and classrooms across the United States and beyond to utilize this global phenomenon of hip-hop culture to create a more powerful educational experience for our Black and Brown students. Although our field has seen significant growth in recent years, the number of citations for most Hip-hop Education research is relatively low. As a community of scholars in the business of education, it is important to ask ourselves how our work is bringing about practical change in the classroom. Ultimately, our work is for our children and must be enacted by educators.
From an instructional standpoint, Hip-hop Education extends beyond the traditional classroom, finding applications in diverse disciplines and real-life experiences. As we move forward, bridging the gap between the classroom and the broader community is crucial, breaking down perceived barriers and enriching the educational experience. The three identified clusters of documents – pedagogical texts, identity texts, and framework texts – showcase the multifaceted nature of Hip-hop Education research and its potential to inform various aspects of education. In the spirit of hip-hop’s fifth element, knowledge of self, let us continue to interrogate and develop our knowledge base.
In conclusion, our bibliometric social network analysis of Hip-hop Education literature has illuminated the transformative potential of hip-hop in educational spaces. The evolution of hip-hop from its roots in the streets of New York to a global phenomenon mirrors the growth and impact of Hip-hop Education research. Like Lin Manuel Miranda’s reimagining of the United States in “Hamilton,” hip-hop educators aim to reshape educational spaces, defying expectations and fostering a more inclusive and engaging learning environment. The call to action is clear: embrace Hip-hop Education as a legitimate and impactful field of inquiry. By doing so, we contribute to the ongoing evolution of Hip-hop Education research, fostering a dynamic and impactful field that resonates within academia and in the lives of students and communities worldwide. Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop – the journey of Hip-hop Education is an ongoing narrative, and our collective efforts shape its future.
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Competing interests: We have no conflict of interest to disclose.
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