“Ain't no love for us ghetto children, so we cold”: Critical information literacy, Hip Hop & asset pedagogy

Informed Assets Information Literacy curricula encompassing culturally sustaining, culturally revitalizing, asset-rooted, Hip-Hop pedagogy can capitalize on the knowledge and cultural wealth of students. Students enroll in my two-credit Tupac and/or hip-hop themed information literacy course because of their affinity for Tupac and hip-hop. We then work to translate their love of Tupac, hip-hop and their cultural expertise and apply their knowledge in the academic environment. Students learn to apply their knowledge and experience while learning research skills using their popular language, music, and culture. This study examined the use of asset-based, critically explicit, racialized and situated pedagogies within a library class curriculum. This collaborative, co-constructed curriculum emerges from the researcher’s and the students’ lived experiences as well as our shared classroom experiences in a Tupac/Hip-Hop themed community college library course. By incorporating multiple student assets and critically-explicit racialized situatedness within the United States, this study developed an additive framework in contrast to the dominant deficit thinking paradigm. This study sought to understand how students acquire new knowledge and integrate it within their experiential cultural knowledge and culturally racialized context.