Category: Book Reviews

Reviewed by Viraj Patel

While noting that dialogues about literacy can serve as a vehicle for developing critical consciousnessFreire (1996) noted, “the content of that dialogue can and should vary in accordance with historical conditions” (p. 65). In contemporary society, Hip Hop music and culture play a pivotal role in the identity development of young adults (Nguyen & Ferguson, 2019).Accordingly, educational research has examined how the critical literacy capacities of Hip Hop texts have helped high school students explore post- 9/11 racial tensions in the U.S. (Hill, 2006), helped adolescentBlack males disturb Eurocentric notions of masculinity (Love, 2013) and young Black females deconstruct notions of femininity (Kelly, 2016), increased high school students’ engagement and connection with ELA curricula (Belle, 2016), and assisted middle school students in reimagining the world and their place in it (Hall & Devirgilio, 2022). Such studies make a compelling case for the use of Hip Hop to engender students’ critical literacies and engage their world- building capacities. However, such studies do not explicitly outline pedagogical considerations such as lesson plans or teaching procedures for using HipHop texts. Teaching with Hip Hop in the 7–12 Grade Classroom by Lauren Leigh Kelly (2023) aims to bridge this gap. Specifically, Kelly identifies Critical Hip Hop Literacies as “approaches to reading and creation of Hip Hop texts and culture that analyze and challenge relation-ships of power and equity” (p. 7).

Video Abstract

Reviewed by Michael S. Jones Illinois State University

United States Educational technology, or edtech, has long been heralded as the equalizer of public education with the hopes of increasing students’ learning and promoting equity and inclusion. Reich argues that edtech is simply the latest innovation to struggle with “basic obstacles that time and time again have tripped up the introduction of large-scale learning systems”(p. 6). Failure to Disrupt: Why Technology Alone Can’t Transform Education differs from what might be considered a traditional edtech review. Instead, it criticizes our educational system and the remnants of its collision over different stakeholders’ visions and goals. It asks the reader, if edtech is a tool, can it repair what is broken in our educational system? Many themes of this book can be summarized by his use of Ellen Lagemann’s quote, ‘“One cannot understand the history of education in the United States during the twentieth century unless one realizes that Edward L. Thorndike won and John Dewey lost”’ (p. 24). In contrast to Dewey’s social constructivism, Reich argues that current educational policy embraces Thorndike’s “instructionism” approach, which uses best practices and standardized testing to “fill the pails” of our students through the science of learning.

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