UCLA School of Education and Information Studies

As science becomes more dependent upon digital data, the need for data curation and for data digital libraries becomes more urgent. Questions remain about what researchers consider to be their data, their criteria for selecting and trusting data, and their orientation to data challenges. This paper reports findings from the first 18 months of research on astronomy data practices from the Data Conservancy. Initial findings suggest that issues for data production, use, preservation, and sharing revolve around factors that rarely are accommodated in use cases for digital library system design including trust in data, funding structures, communication channels, and perceptions of scientific value.

In a time where there are various representations of race in the United States, many ethnic minority groups still face a number of challenges that are related to the color of their skin, socioeconomic status, national status, and gender.  These challenges are referred to as microaggressions.  Solorzano & Perez Huber (2012) discusses racial microaggressions specifically as, “one form of systemic everyday racism used to keep those at the racial margins in their place” (p.1489). In this paper, we use Critical Race Theory as a tool and a framework to examine a few different forms of microaggressions, mainly racial microaggressions, from different ethnic groups.  We recognize microaggressions continue to exist in our society. Furthermore, we acknowledge that transformational resistance begins when we identify these various forms of microaggressions.

Writing Names, Reading Hip Hop reports on the cultural naming practices and pedagogies of the Beats Club, an experimental Language and Literacy(ies) program for children in central Los Angeles (Orellana, 2016). Across three years of play and study in Beats - Stely, Caiyl, Feldspar, Kiboo, Fina, Curipaii and 70 others engaged in the invention and writing of their Club pseudonyms, following the Hip Hop cultural practices known as StyleWriting[1] (Rossomando, 1996). In this dissertation I break down what our Beats Club Naming (BCN) activity is and means, unpacking the names-based Pedagogy(ies) employed and kids’ dynamic Response(s). I ask and answer, how do these naming practices of StyleWriting shape and support children’s pathways to and through Language, Literacy(ies), and Learning.

I take aim at the problem of inequality, and its perpetuation through standardized, Western schooling (Au, 2009; Hill, 1998; Woodson, 1969). I (Hip Hop) intervene(s) in the problem with a fresh pedagogical design and methods from those that dominate school structuring. I articulate an architecture for Hip Hop Pedagogy built from historical record and knowledge of cultural practitioners. This socio-historical, socio-cultural knowledge is paired with children’s multi-dimensional engagement in Names practice, to develop fresh ideas about Language, Literacy, and Pedagogy that is grounded (Petchauer, 2009; Silverman, 2010; Suddaby, 2006) in the Names and Naming social practice of Beats. Driven by Hip Hop’s “intimate tie[s] to educational practices and possibilities” (Alim & Pennycook, 2007), this work builds on the important research tradition of studying and theorizing children’s and youths’ social, language and literacies practice(s) (Alim, 2004; Bucholtz, 2002; Lee, 1997; Moll, Amanti, Neff, & Gonzalez, 1992; Orellana, 2016; Orellana & Reynolds, 2008; Rymes, 1996; Willis, 1990; Zentella, 1997), including the vast body of Literacy(ies) research following the works of Heath (1983); Labov (2004); Street (1984); TheNewLondonGroup (1996). This work engages with Third Space (Guiterrez, 2008), play-based (Cole, 2006) literatures. It enters into dialogue with a broad field of research on critical pedagogy(ies) (Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008; Freire, 1970; Shor, 1992; Trafi-Prats, 2009) and focused on developing “asset-based” pedagogies (Paris, 2012; Paris & Alim, 2014). In this piece, these streams of works and theoretical sources are taken “to bold new levels” of Hip Hop education” (Seidel, 2011). By engaging children in Hip Hop’s elemental practices and cultural principles, this work breaks new ground in the tradition of Hip Hop-based educational research (Alim, 2004, 2006, 2009; Alim, 2011; Dimitriadis, 2009; Duncan-Andrade & Morrell, 2008; Pennycook, 2007; Petchauer, 2009, 2015; Seidel, 2011). As any good Hip Hop research should, I (re)Mix across this multi-stream conceptual framing to (re)Make fresh ideas of educational theories, research, and practice.

To conduct the study, I use and introduce Hip Hop Methodology (HHM), an approach whose goals are to create original, authentic research. HHM represent new directions and potentials in research by and about POC; it is a participatory, Africalogical (Asante, 1990; Mazama, 2003) and Indigenous (Cajete, 1994; Grande, 2004), whole (Hilliard, 1986; Nobles, 2008) approach to research. I engaged HipHopographic methods in Beats (Alim, 2006; Spady, 2013; Spady, Alim, & Meghelli, 2006) to collect, organize, and triangulate information sources (Erickson, 2004), including: a) observational fieldnotes (Heath & Street, 2008), b) photographs and video recordings; c) artifacts (Hammersley & Atkinson, 2007); and d) Dialogues (Ada & Beutel, 1993; Freire and Macedo, 1987) held with14 participants at the end of three years. These methods aim to capture a prismic or multi-perspectival, aesthetic (Eagleton, 1988; Thompson, 1984), and whole (Asante, 1990; Hilliard, 1995; Nobles, 2008) view and interpretation of activity. I reviewed and color-coded by hand a triangulated Tome of all sources (Erickson, 2004). I employed fluid, blended domain-theme-taxonomic analyses (LeCompte & Schensul, 2010; Spradley, 1980), and visual mapping strategies, to (re)organize and make sense of data, uncovering the patterns of Beats Club Naming (BCN).

I organize a Phase-time (Rossomando, 1996) historical record of our Beatstory[2]. This narrative of Beats naming provides an evidentiary reference and basis for explaining children’s five-dimensional engagement in practice, and the True Hip Hop Pedagogy model animating it. StyleWriting is and offers a pedagogical approach in which kids practice and play with Language all-modally, developing Literacy(ies) multi-dimensionally. Kids sample from possible means and modes, and invent, or Mix and Make, their names; over time they engaging in sustained re-Mixing that results in kids’ re-Making of their selves. Children determine their selves through names, a practice that builds, self-esteem, self-worth, and self-love. The self-knowledge and love kids gain from deep personal introspection and fluid practice of names, builds collective-community-cultural engagement. Names becomes a lived practice of Writing and learning that children take and create across all of their lifeworlds, connecting all of their Literacies and Learning from across contexts. Through our name invention we navigate the (infinite) possibilities for shaping ourselves and our social worlds and futures, on our own terms, engaging in self–directed education, or ‘la autoeducación’. Through names children restore their agency, “reclaiming authorship over their lives” (Freire & Macedo, 1987).

Also emerging from analyses of kids naming is an overstanding (KRS-One, 2009) of Beats’ Pedagogy model, a Hip Hop educational scheme of dimensions and themes. Together these explanations of names practice(s) and pedagogy(ies) answer the research question of how StyleWriting practice shapes and supports children’s Language and Literacies.

Beats’ Hip Hop model successfully flips the script on the dominant order (Miller, 2002) of schooling. StyleWriting and Hip Hop culture offer an alternative to traditional models, that humanizes and multi-dimensionally engages learners. The practice of names provides students with tools for getting through and getting over; this model engenders equality, and ignites student creativity(ies). This Hip Hop design of youth cultural practices and principles stands to offer Education that is not only relevant, but also revelatory –capable of great change to the unequal conditions of schools and society.

[1] Also known as Aerosol or spray can Art, Urban Hieroglyphics, Street Calligraphy

Women of color (WOC) remain underrepresented in the STEM workforce due to systemic racism and sexism. Using Yosso’s (2005) anti-deficit Community Cultural Wealth framework, this study quantitatively explored factors associated with STEM career aspiration persistence among senior WOC undergraduates who entered college with initial STEM career aspirations. Drawing on longitudinal data from the Higher Education Research Institute’s (HERI) 2015 Freshman Survey (TFS) and 2019 College Senior Survey (CSS), we analyzed a sample of 1,460 WOC graduating seniors across 42 institutions using logistic regression. Results revealed that aspirational and navigational capital played pivotal roles in maintaining STEM career aspirations. Specifically, WOC who expressed strong desires to make scientific contributions were significantly more likely to maintain STEM career aspirations. Additionally, WOC who participated in undergraduate research and STEM support programs had significantly higher likelihoods of reporting STEM career plans at the end of their senior year. By contrast, WOC with strong resistant capital, particularly those committed to social change and community leadership, were less likely to sustain their interest in pursuing STEM careers. We conclude by discussing several recommendations for practice and future research.

Since the late 1970s, feminist media scholars have used the term “symbolic annihilation” to denote how strong women characters are absent, grossly under-represented, maligned, or trivialized by mainstream television programming, news outlets, and magazine coverage. In the wake of this absence, minoritized communities fail to see themselves or their place in the world. In archival studies, the concept of symbolic annihilation has recently has been used to describe the affective impact on the South Asian American community of being excluded, silenced or misrepresented in mainstream archival collections.  The proposed paper builds on and expands this research by examining the affective impact of both exclusion and representation in archives on members of communities that have coalesced around and been marginalized because of ethnic, racial, gender, sexual, and/or political identities. Based on more than a dozen in-depth qualitative interviews with practitioners at several independent community archives in Southern California—including those representing LGBTQ communities and communities of color—our research explores how symbolic annihilation operates and the affect it produces among archives users. We argue that independent, identity-based community archives can counter the symbolic annihilation of mainstream collections by providing avenues for minoritized communities to meaningfully represent themselves. We propose the term representational belonging to describe the ways in which such organizations enable people to have the power and authority to establish and enact their presence in ways that are complex, meaningful, substantive, and positive.