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The purpose of this paper is to share with social science educators a coherent framework for implementing Hamilton: An American Musical into their classrooms, while also supporting the wider objective of leveraging music to foster disciplinary literacy skills and culturally relevant practices. The framework is a construct that draws on author’s previous teaching experience and its purpose is to inform and support teachers’ practice.

The author first highlights literature focused on the effectiveness of using music in the social science classroom as a response to author’s own teaching experience using Hamilton: An American Musical, then hones in on the impact of hip-hop music specifically. Finally, the author unites Pellegrino’s (2013) models (close reading, inquiry, student discovery and creative development) to songs from Miranda’s Hamilton to provide pedagogical strategies and examples that are ready to be implemented in the Secondary US History Classroom.

Lin Manuel Miranda’s portrayal of Hamilton and his historical compatriots as ethnically diverse, combustible and provocative figures bring to life experiences that are unexpectedly and uniquely American, connecting with current generations, while remaining anchored in history (Mason, 2017). The success and relatability of Miranda’s Hamilton and this time-warped story of the founding fathers has led social studies teachers to explore ways to use the music, dialogue and messages in their classrooms.

While many lesson examples related to Lin Manuel Miranda’s Hamilton have proliferated online, there remains a lack of pedagogical coherence to help teachers extend this work as part of a larger framework of practice designed to support teaching and learning through music. The author strives to provide social science educators a strategic, adaptable and ready-to-use framework for implementing Miranda’s Hamilton: An American Musical into their classrooms.

In this chapter, we present Self-Study of Teaching and Teacher Education Practices (S-STEP) as a research methodology that can be used pedagogically to explore the practices of teacher educators for their professional development. It can be seen as a pedagogic practice that enlists reflection to enable teacher educators to explore and explicate practice and make explicit what they know about teaching and teacher education in order to improve practice and contribute to larger conversations in research on teaching and teacher education. After providing a succinct interpretation of the origins of S-STEP work, we suggest that historical context, along with the understanding of the theoretical underpinnings, makes it viable as a research methodology and a potentially valuable pedagogy for teacher education research. S-STEP is an intimate research methodology (Hamilton, 1995) in which the person conducting the research is both the focus and the author of the research and provides an insider’s perspective into practice and experience.

We provide examples to demonstrate how others and we take up S-STEP as pedagogy for teacher educator professional development that allows us to grapple with what we know either explicitly or tacitly from and about our practice. International S-STEP research has the power to inform the professional development of teacher educators across these boundaries, because it attends carefully to the particular of the practice and context from which it emerged.

The case is set in summer 2016, centered on the writer and performing star, Lin-Manuel Miranda, whose Broadway show Hamilton had grossed almost $75 million and won 11 Tony Awards. The musical's cultural influence was buoyed by Miranda’s 578,000 Twitter followers; hundreds of celebrities from Oprah Winfrey to Jennifer Lopez had become ambassadors for the musical; and its impromptu #Ham4Ham live performances were engaging thousands of people on social media with each release. The case explores specific tactics the show employed, challenges students to consider the importance of personality in creating social media buzz, and studies the practical influence social media may have had on the show’s success. It is appropriate for any marketing course, particularly a digital media class in which students are familiar with the major platforms.

In this chapter, we examine conundrums of self-study of practice (S-SP) research that emerge from positioning this work in a space that calls for a critical rethinking of ontology and takes seriously the work of postmodernist philosophy. We explore aspects of self in relationship to the other – concerns, transformations, representations positioning, and growth – when ideas emerge in the midst of practice. We begin with an investigation of conundrums of Self in relationship to Other where both exist in continual process of BECOMING based in the work of Deleuze. We then consider the self within the research framework of S-SP methodology. As part of this examination, we consider key characteristics of this methodology in relationship to the self in practice that is the orientation to ontology and dialogue as the process of coming-to-know in this space. Next, we consider the conundrum of particularity and wholeness in the exploration of tacit and practical knowledge. We use works by Clandinin and others to probe the ways particularities and wholeness interact with tacit understandings that entangle and merge into embodied knowing. We also articulate the conundrum of the ethical for the Self and Other in S-SP Research and other forms of intimate scholarship.

Hamilton Standard dates back to 1919 when the Standard Steel Propeller Company was formed in Pittsburgh, Pa. Standard Steel is best known for the propeller it designed and built for Charles Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis.

This chapter analyzes our practice as researchers engaged in intimate scholarship using the Framework of Analysis (Pinnegar & Hamilton, 2009) as an analytic tool to scrutinize the trustworthiness of our research practice and to develop a deeper understanding of how S-STEP research establishes itself as trustworthy and rigorous scholarship. With the recognition of S-STEP research and other forms of intimate scholarship as genres of teacher education research (Borko, Liston, & Whitcomb, 2007), scholars engaged and other forms of intimate scholarship can turn to a more rigorous inquiry into and critique of our work in order to consider how we might improve our practice as researchers and support and strengthen the position and future of this research. For these reasons, we take up a critique of a particular S-STEP research study using the Framework for Analysis in order to explore both whether the work studied can be judged trustworthy and what such examination reveals about the process of establishing the trustworthiness of studies utilizing intimate scholarship methodologies.