Why are so many people around the globe enamored with hip hop culture? How do young people develop morality and ethics through their engagement with rap music? These are questions that Dr. Kalonji Nzinga, an assistant professor of Learning Sciences and Human Development at the University of Colorado, Boulder, tries to answer through his work. In today’s episode, we’ll talk about:

….hip hop as an art form that comes from African traditions of storytelling,

…the differences between oral vs. written traditions in transmitting knowledge within a community, and 

...the etymology of the word “woke”.

What is fascinating about Kalonji is his ability to push boundaries in ways that allow him to fully live into his multi-hyphenate identity –  as a hip hop artist, cultural psychologist, educator, and learning scientist. We’re so excited to bring this conversation to you today.

As always, email us with your comments and questions. Our email is [email protected].

Episode transcript.

Works Discussed:

1. Bâ, A. H. (1989). The living tradition. In UNESCO General History of Africa, Vol. I, Abridged Edition: Methodology and African Prehistory (Vol. 1, pp. 166–205). Heinemann Unesco; www.ucpress.edu

2. Keeping Language Arts On The Low: A Low-Key Rap Verse | Kalonji Nzinga | CU Boulder's Ed Talks

3. Kalonji Nzinga: We Can’t Breathe: Prefigurative Artivism as a Means of Returning to Our Breath

Dr. Suraj Uttamchandani is a visiting research scientist at the Indiana University Center for Research on Learning and Technology. In today’s episode, we’ll discuss his experience as an undergraduate mathematics major and how policies in the United States like Religious Freedom Restoration Act directly informed his scholarship, which is at the intersection of educational equity, the learning sciences, and critical qualitative methodologies.

In our conversation, we talk about educational intimacy – a construct that came out of his dissertation, as he was trying to put a finger on the forms of the learning that were happening in an LGBTQ+ youth group. We talk about his participation as a volunteer in the group, and how his methodological training within and outside of the learning sciences prepared him to take on this work. He is currently exploring non-Western orientations to learning and development with the South Asian learning sciences Research collective.

What I found most compelling in this conversation with Suraj is the invitational nature of his work, and the connections between his lived experiences and how he goes about his research. We also talk about the revisionist nature of learning – how what we put down on paper is just a mere capture of our current thinking, and how taking a retrospective lens to our own work helps us see how we’ve moved forward or deepened our initial ideas. I hope you enjoy this episode and look forward to your reactions and responses to our conversation.

As always, email us with your comments, questions. Our email is [email protected].

Episode transcript.

Works discussed:

Uttamchandani, S. (2018). Equity in the learning sciences: Recent themes and pathways. In J. Kay & R. Luckin (Eds.), International Conference of the Learning Sciences (ICLS) 2018, Volume 1 (pp. 480-487). International Society of the Learning Sciences. 

Uttamchandani, S. (2021). Educational intimacy: Learning, prefiguration, and relationships in an LGBTQ+ youth group’s advocacy efforts. Journal of the Learning Sciences 30(1), 52-75. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508406.2020.1821202 

Tuck, E. (2009). Suspending Damage: A Letter to Communities. Harvard Educational Review, 79(3), 409–428. https://doi.org/10.17763/haer.79.3.n0016675661t3n15

In today's episode, we talk with Dr. Joe Curnow, currently an assistant professor at the University of Manitoba. Joe studies the learning that happens as people participate in social movements. Our conversation begins with Joe recounting her early days as an undergraduate student at Northwestern, as an organizer on Chicago's north side, and working on fair trade policies in Washington, DC. She talks about how she became politicized and started to see that the issues she cared about were really just indicators and outcomes of larger societal issues in our economy and trade policies. We focus a good chunk of our time talking about her most recent work, including the article called Politicization and Process: Developing Political Concepts, Practices, Epistemologies, and Identities Through Activist Engagement. That article, among others, came out of her efforts to describe the learning processes she saw happening. We also talk about the relationship between organizing, learning, and taking action. Much of this is contextualized in a book that's been formative for her career called We Make a Road by Walking. The book is a transcript of a facilitated conversation between Myles Horton and Paulo Freire.

Episode transcript.

Works discussed:

1. Horton, M., & Freire, P. (1990). We make the road by walking: Conversations on education and social change. Temple University Press.

2. Curnow, J., Fernandes, T., Dunphy, S., & Asher, L. (2020). Pedagogies of Snark: Learning through Righteous, Riotous Anger in the Youth Climate Movement. Gender & Education. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540253.2020.1786014.

3. Curnow, J., Davis, A., & Asher, L. (2019). Politicization in Process: Developing Political Concepts, Practices, Epistemologies, and Identities Through Activist Engagement. American Educational Research Journal. 56(3) 716-752. https://doi.org/10.3102/0002831218804496

What does it mean to be a learning scientist? What are the unique contributions of learning scientists to the problems we are trying to tackle as a society? How does one find their way to this field?

Humans of Learning Sciences aims to stimulate conversations within the field and beyond about the work of studying and promoting learning in a diversity of contexts. We aim to amplify the voices of diverse scholars (in academia, research, industry, and non-profit organizations) at various stages in their careers in order to showcase the range of methods, approaches, and trajectories that define the interdisciplinary field of learning sciences.

Dr. Mon-Lin Monica Ko holds a PhD in the learning sciences from Northwestern University. She is a research assistant professor at the Learning Sciences Research Institute at the University of Illinois of Chicago.

The series is co-produced by Andrew Gregory Krzak (MFA), a multi-modal storyteller and educator.