- Curriculum Studies, Curriculum Design, Curriculum Theory, Indigenous Studies, Postcolonial Studies, Oral history, and 22 moreOral History and Memory, Critical Theory, Critical Pedagogy, Cultural Studies, Social Justice, Social Change, Social Inclusion, Practice Based Approaches to the Study of Knowing, Learning and Change In Organisations, Higher Education Feminist Studies of Science and Technology, Collaborative Action Research Methodologies, Action Research, Education Policy, History of Education, Social Sciences, Political Theory, Teacher Education, Educational Research, Education, Public Policy, Comparative & International Education, and Qualitative Researchedit
- Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook is a Full Professor and Vice-Dean of Graduate Studies. He is the former Director of the Teach... moreDr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook is a Full Professor and Vice-Dean of Graduate Studies. He is the former Director of the Teacher Education and Indigenous Teacher Education Programs at the Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa. He is actively engaged in addressing the 94 Calls to Action put forth by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in partnership with local Indigenous and school board communities. His teaching and research are situated within the wider international field of curriculum studies. As a curriculum theorist, he draws on different life writing research methodologies—autobiography, ethnography, oral history, and narrative inquiry—to co-create, support, and sustain culturally responsive, relevant, and relational curriculum with school leaders and teachers who seek to serve their different communities. He is a Past-President of the Canadian Society for the Study of Education, the largest research association in Canada. For his ongoing service to his field of study, in 2018 he received the Canadian Association of Curriculum Studies Ted. T. Aoki Distinguished Service Award. He is the co-editor for the University of Ottawa Press Education Series.
To learn more about Dr. Ng-A-Fook’s research visit his Faculty page
Follow him on Twitter @nick_ngafook, or listen to his Fooknconversation podcast.edit
In that course, we were called upon to attend to a “critical examination of research within the field of curriculum studies” (Ng-A-Fook, 2020, p. 1). During our weekly online conversations, I invited graduate students to reactivate,... more
In that course, we were called upon to attend to a “critical examination
of research within the field of curriculum studies” (Ng-A-Fook, 2020, p. 1).
During our weekly online conversations, I invited graduate students to reactivate, reconstruct, unlearn, and learn the different settler colonial conceptions of what might constitute “Canadian Curriculum Studies” in relation to Aoki’s concepts of the curriculum-as-planned, -implemented, and -lived. Over the course of the term, and during our intellectual studies, our meditations, our conversations, we drew on currere, life writing research, to analyze and synthesize the juxtaposition of different narrative snapshots that seek, without promise, to reactivate the absent presence of “settler colonialism,” “truth,” and then “reconciliation” towards reconstructing our understandings of “curriculum,” and perhaps even ourselves and our relations with others. A micro- situated synthesis, if you will, of what Rocha (2020) calls elsewhere The Syllabus as Curriculum. Or here in this chapter, what we might contemplate as reconstructing a curriculum studies seminar, a complicated conversation, with and about the concepts of “Canadian” and “curriculum” in relation to restorying and (re)placing the intertextual narrative tapestries of our life histories.In this book chapter share a series of what I have called elsewhere narrative snapshots, always situated, and partial. Moreover, I draw on the recurring methodological movements of currere to address the following questions: What is the “isness” of “Canadian” curriculum studies? What are our relations to such “isness?” And yet, what I am asking here is not for the “business,” or instrumentalized “busyness” of understanding “curriculum” in the making, but rather for a breaking, and a remaking, of our understandings of “Canadian,” “curriculum,” “settler colonialism,” “truth” and then “reconciliation,” in terms of the temporal dimensions of our public consciousness.
of research within the field of curriculum studies” (Ng-A-Fook, 2020, p. 1).
During our weekly online conversations, I invited graduate students to reactivate, reconstruct, unlearn, and learn the different settler colonial conceptions of what might constitute “Canadian Curriculum Studies” in relation to Aoki’s concepts of the curriculum-as-planned, -implemented, and -lived. Over the course of the term, and during our intellectual studies, our meditations, our conversations, we drew on currere, life writing research, to analyze and synthesize the juxtaposition of different narrative snapshots that seek, without promise, to reactivate the absent presence of “settler colonialism,” “truth,” and then “reconciliation” towards reconstructing our understandings of “curriculum,” and perhaps even ourselves and our relations with others. A micro- situated synthesis, if you will, of what Rocha (2020) calls elsewhere The Syllabus as Curriculum. Or here in this chapter, what we might contemplate as reconstructing a curriculum studies seminar, a complicated conversation, with and about the concepts of “Canadian” and “curriculum” in relation to restorying and (re)placing the intertextual narrative tapestries of our life histories.In this book chapter share a series of what I have called elsewhere narrative snapshots, always situated, and partial. Moreover, I draw on the recurring methodological movements of currere to address the following questions: What is the “isness” of “Canadian” curriculum studies? What are our relations to such “isness?” And yet, what I am asking here is not for the “business,” or instrumentalized “busyness” of understanding “curriculum” in the making, but rather for a breaking, and a remaking, of our understandings of “Canadian,” “curriculum,” “settler colonialism,” “truth” and then “reconciliation,” in terms of the temporal dimensions of our public consciousness.
Research Interests: History, Education, Indigenous Studies, Teacher Education, History of Education, and 15 moreHigher Education, Narrative, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Social Justice, Podcasting, Curriculum Theory, Social Studies, Curriculum and Instruction, Settler Colonial Studies, Graduate Studies, Democracy and Citizenship Education, Curriculum and Pedagogy, Life History and Currere, and Truth and Reconciliation Commissions
In this chapter then, I draw on the different methodological movements of currere – regression, progression, analysis, and synthesis – to reactivate, reconstruct, and juxtapose three narrative snapshots of different significant lived... more
In this chapter then, I draw on the different methodological movements of currere – regression, progression, analysis, and synthesis – to reactivate, reconstruct, and juxtapose three narrative snapshots of different significant lived experiences while studying within the Curriculum Theory Project at Louisiana State University (Hendry, 2011; Pinar, 2007, 2019). The first narrative snapshot is in relation to studying at LSU as an international graduate student, first-generation hyphenated immigrant Canadian citizen, and as a guest on the unceded traditional territories of the United Houma Nation. The second snapshot is in relation to living a curriculum theory project with fellow graduate students while we unlearned and learned together as a community. The third narrative snapshot will return to the autobiographical demand and social significance of place in relation to unlearning and learning with United Houma Nation Elders. In the concluding snapshot, I offer a synthesis, a placing, of the ongoing psychosocial significance of these three snapshots, life writing, and place in relation to some of the current research with graduate students and a Canadian Curriculum Theory Project (see www.curriculumtheoryproject.ca).
Research Interests: Critical Theory, History, Education, Indigenous Studies, Teacher Education, and 11 moreHistory of Education, Narrative, Qualitative methodology, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Critical Race Theory, Autobiography, Curriculum Theory, Curriculum and Instruction, Settler Colonial Studies, and Biography and Life-Writing
What are the purposes of settler-colonial, nation-state-sponsored public education? What have they been? What might they be? Of course, answers to any of these questions depends on who you ask, and/or who is doing the asking. In Schooling... more
What are the purposes of settler-colonial, nation-state-sponsored public education? What have they been? What might they be? Of course, answers to any of these questions depends on who you ask, and/or who is doing the asking. In Schooling in Transition, Burke and Milewski (2012) outline the different political, epistemological, cultural, and historical perspectives and debates that have framed different historians’ interpretive historiographic responses to such curricular and pedagogical questions. “Education history of the past fifty years can be conceptualized,” as Burke and Milewski suggest, “in terms of four broadly but overlapping stages: the traditional progressive approach of the 1950s and 1960s; the revisionism of the 1970s; the emphasis on factors of race, class, and gender of the 1980s, and by the 1990s, the turn toward diversity and multidisciplinarity” (2012: 3). In their introduction, Burke and Milewski stress, “since the 1990s, education history in Canada has been characterized by diversity, and historians have continued to broaden their field of inquiry to include formal and informal types of education” (6). Educational historians in the United States have addressed similar historical debates about school reform...This chapter, then, seeks to situate and unsettle past historical interpretations about the purposes of public education in relation to settler colonialism and strategic anti-racist readings of educational history. We also seek to illustrate how the settler colonial purposes of schooling are intractably linked with our political and interpretive readings of history education. We have sought to demonstrate how the building of nation-states in North America relied on a public education system and respective curricular that continues to “fuel” the notion of progress connected to unfettered technoeconomic growth and the ongoing extractive devastation of the more-than-human world. To do so, we draw on the scholarship of different Indigenous, Black, and racialized scholars who have and continue to call on different educational stakeholders to re-story the purposes of public education in ways that seek to sustain the livelihood of our relations with each other, the land, and its kin.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, History, Education, Indigenous Studies, Teacher Education, and 11 moreHistory of Education, Critical Pedagogy, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Critical Race Theory, Curriculum Theory, Educational Philosophy, Settler Colonial Studies, Curriculum, Social Foundations of Education, and Decolonizing Education
Since the publication of the first volume of Initial Teacher Education in Ontario (Petrarca & Kitchen, 2017b), we have been called upon to address the macro and micro contexts of the COVID- 19 pandemic and, particularly, the ongoing... more
Since the publication of the first volume of Initial Teacher Education in Ontario (Petrarca & Kitchen, 2017b), we have been called upon to address the macro and micro contexts of the COVID- 19 pandemic and, particularly, the ongoing systemic barriers for the different Indigenous, Black, and People of Colour (IBPOC) students we seek to serve. Consequently, we have had to rethink and reconceptualize our program in relation to the COVID-19 pandemic; Asian-, Indigenous-, Black-, and other forms of antiracisms; truth and reconciliation education; and equity, diversity, and inclusion (Henry et al., 2017). In the first edited collection, like other institutions, we primarily provided an overview of our conceptual framework, structure, and content of the program in response to provincial calls to extend teacher education programs. Although we had some initiatives, programming, and professional learning days in place, we recognized that we needed to be more proactive in creating, supporting, and sustaining a teacher education curriculum that seeks to address individual, systemic, and societal forms of discrimination such as racism(s) (James, 2010, 2021).
Research Interests: Education, Indigenous Studies, Educational Leadership, Teacher Education, Higher Education, and 12 moreEducational Research, Curriculum Studies, Teacher Research, Teachers' professional development, Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education, Curriculum Development, Professional Learning Community, Curriculum and Instruction, Curriculum, Antiracist Education, Curriculum and Pedagogy, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
In this chapter, we are trying to understand how settlers and First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities might live a praxis of reconciliation here in what some of us now call Canada. How might we address the civic particularities of... more
In this chapter, we are trying to understand how settlers and First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities might live a praxis of reconciliation here in what some of us now call Canada. How might we address the civic particularities of living reconciliation together? How might we live a praxis of reconciliation as a form of ethical engagement? And what does such conduct look or feel like within the contexts of Ontario teacher education? At the very least, such curricular and pedagogical work involves studying questions that concern our historical consciousness as treaty people. To do so, we need to reread the historical narratives that shape our historical consciousness and, in turn, compel us to reconstruct our (mis)understandings of past and present relations with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities.
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In this chapter, we draw on Jacques Derrida’s (2000) concept of unconditional hospitality to deconstruct and reconceptualize the discourses related to citizenship education here in Ontario schools. In turn, we reread his concept with, and... more
In this chapter, we draw on Jacques Derrida’s (2000) concept of unconditional hospitality to deconstruct and reconceptualize the discourses related to citizenship education here in Ontario schools. In turn, we reread his concept with, and against, the narratives of teachers, teacher candidates, and students who were part of a larger collaborative curriculum inquiry project between the Urban Community Teacher Education Cohort and local urban priority school communities here in Ottawa, Canada. Part of our ongoing curriculum inquiries are an attempt to understand how we might address concepts such as, but not limited to “unconditional hospitality” as a curricular and pedagogical response to the existing barriers for newcomers and refugees students migrating, living, and learning to become transnational citizens within our public schooling systems.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Philosophy, Education, Media Studies, Youth Studies, and 12 moreTeacher Education, Refugee Studies, Narrative, Qualitative methodology, Critical Pedagogy, Curriculum Studies, Urban Studies, Curriculum Theory, Migrant and Diasporic Literature, Curriculum and Instruction, Citizenship, and Democracy and Citizenship Education
For educators teaching in an era of apology, Canadian teachers must be both knowledgeable about the historical injustices have transpired, and pedagogically responsive to the day-to-day realities that may obfuscate bringing such... more
For educators teaching in an era of apology, Canadian teachers must be both knowledgeable about the historical injustices have transpired, and pedagogically responsive to the day-to-day realities that may obfuscate bringing such conversations into the classroom. For Canadian educators, more teachers are responding to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s call to incorporate the histories of Indian residential schooling in K-12 classrooms, which, however necessary, requires attention to the ethical implications that surround such a responsibility. During this paper presentation, we will consider how educators may listen to the lived experiences of others—particularly survivors of Indian residential schooling—through a pedagogy that attends to an ethics of listening. We begin by contextualizing the history of how Indian residential schooling came to be in Canada and frame the significance of truthtelling and oral histories in relation to our work in teacher education. An overview of the Legacy of Hope’s website, Where are the Children?, is also provided, to guide educators to the educative possibilities of using the oral histories from survivors, available online, in their own classrooms. We frame this conversation in light of a turn towards the pedagogical possibilities of emotion—a pedagogy of emotion—wherein the emotional consequence of learning about historical injustices can be purposeful and mobilizing. We suggest that when using oral histories from residential school survivors, the intent should be less about studying and reconciling a past, and more about ethically engaging with counternarratives to implicate oneself in relationship with the story, storyteller and personal lived experience. The possibilities of such listening as ceremony, as we suggest, may in turn be helpful for educators to subtly but impactfully shift their thinking from the victimization of Indigenous experiences in Canada, towards the resilience of Indigenous nationhood in relationship with ethically implicated citizens who bear a responsibility for a collective future.
Research Interests: History, Education, Indigenous Studies, Teacher Education, History of Education, and 11 moreCritical Pedagogy, Civic Education, Oral history, Pedagogy, Reconciliation, Curriculum and Instruction, Settler Colonial Studies, Citizenship, Decolonization, Anti-Colonialism, and Truth and Reconciliation Commissions
This chapter draws upon the concepts of cosmopolitanism, affect, and art, to study our precarious relations with the commons. The connection between politics, environment, and art can be facilitated, we suggest, through a cosmopolitan... more
This chapter draws upon the concepts of cosmopolitanism, affect, and art, to study our precarious relations with the commons. The connection between politics, environment, and art can be facilitated, we suggest, through a cosmopolitan worldview that is produced through aesthetics—or what we might call a cosmopolitan imaginary. In this chapter, we also provide a short historical overview of the oil sands in Alberta. Our situated historical narrative partially traces conversions of Settler farming and ranching economies to the boom and bust fluctuations of the black bold industry. Using the oil sands narrative as a backdrop, the next section draws on these concepts to illustrate an analysis of five of Louis Helbig’s aesthetic representation of the oil sands. These images call on us us to critically interpret the different implications and connotations of enclosing the commons beyond a beautiful destruction. In the final section we return to the Indigenous communities such as Standing Rock, the Athabasca Chipewyan First Nations, and the Mikisew Cree First Nation that have fought the development of the pipelines and the massive infrastructure across/through their lands. By troubling the concept of the commons in relation to Indigenous communities and traditional territories, we combine the reality of sacred lands, the art, and the impenetrable relationship of politics and energy.
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Today, immigrants from all over the world continue to come to Ontario for the prospect of bettering their lives. Teacher Education programs across the province have just implemented one of the largest reforms to their programs since... more
Today, immigrants from all over the world continue to come to Ontario for the prospect of bettering their lives. Teacher Education programs across the province have just implemented one of the largest reforms to their programs since Normal Schools and Colleges of Teachers were integrated as Faculties of Education within their respective Universities. Our programs, which have now transitioned from a 2 to a 4-semester program, have extended most programs in the province by an additional eight months. The Ontario Ministry of Education is slowly beginning to address the concerns of First Nations, Métis and Inuit communities who have inhabited these territories since time immemorial within its curriculum policy documents. However, such curricular policies have yet to redress the intergenerational impacts of appropriating traditional Indigenous lands in order to establish our Ontario provincial schooling system. In this chapter then, we juxtapose several historical narratives that offer a partial account of the complex story we call Ontario teacher education in this chapter. At the same time, several narratives remain at the periphery, or even absent from our historical accounting. We therefore encourage anyone with an interest in researching and developing additional historical accounts and their curricular implications to consider this chapter as a starting point for critically analyzing and synthesizing the differing histories that may reconcile Ontario teacher education toward reimagining our past, present, and future relations as Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians.
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This chapter is written up as a letter to the late Dr. William E. Doll Jr. for the following collection Complexifying Curriculum Studies Reflections on the Generative and Generous Gifts of William E. Doll, Jr. It was edited by Molly Quinn.
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In this chapter, I suggest that playing, theorizing, and narrating life histories of hyph-e-nated subjectivities becoming international, affords us opportunities to understand the contradictions, paradoxes, and theoretical assumptions... more
In this chapter, I suggest that playing, theorizing, and narrating life histories of hyph-e-nated subjectivities becoming international, affords us opportunities to understand the contradictions, paradoxes, and theoretical assumptions active at the edges of the hyphen. I draw on the work of William F. Pinar to discuss the various ways his concept of currere has enabled us to make interstices at the margins of the hyphen more audible and their cross-cultural pigmentations more visible.
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In the spring of 2015, the city of Ottawa hosted both the closing ceremonies of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) into Canada’s Indian Residential Schools and the 5th Triennial International Association for the Advancement of... more
In the spring of 2015, the city of Ottawa hosted both the closing ceremonies of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) into Canada’s Indian Residential Schools and the 5th Triennial International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies (IAACS) conference. In this paper, we reflect on the coincidence of these two events, by drawing on our presentations at IAACS to provide a series of reflections on the implications of the TRC’s Final Report for us as settler educators and researchers. Living and working in Canada’s colonial capital, what are our responsibilities to take up truth and reconciliation? How should we proceed? Addressing these curricular questions, we present four narrative snapshots that seek to understand the Ontario secondary school civics curriculum, teacher education, and the curricular and pedagogical (re)organization of postsecondary institutions in light of the educational recommendations of the TRC. We discuss the particular complexities of taking up truth and reconciliation in these different contexts, and provide examples of possible ways forward. Drawing particularly on the ground-breaking work of Cynthia Chambers, we attempt to situate these examples of our work as curriculum scholars within the landscape of Ottawa, looking first to the colonial institutions we have built upon the unceded ancestral land, then to the pre-existing relational landscape that makes all of this possible. Living and working within these topographies, we consider how we as settler scholars and educators can ethically engage with local Indigenous communities, and take part in the ongoing work of truth and reconciliation.
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Autobiography and Teacher Development in China investigates the roles of autobiography in teacher education, as several scholars in China recontextualize Western conceptions of teacher development, combining them with uniquely Chinese... more
Autobiography and Teacher Development in China investigates the roles of autobiography in teacher education, as several scholars in China recontextualize Western conceptions of teacher development, combining them with uniquely Chinese cultural conceptions to articulate a reconceptualization of teacher development that holds worldwide significance. Framed by the work of Zhang Hua and William F. Pinar, these theoretical and practical essays point to an internationally inflected reconceptualization of teachers' professional development, pre-service and in-service. This volume addresses multiple movements of teacher education reform worldwide, focused on crafting a nationally distinctive course not only internationally, but also culturally, historically, and locally.
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Deeply inspired by the praxis—and aesthetics—of literary métissage, we attempted to represent these conversations, first, to each other during our gatherings. Like Blood, Chambers, Donald, Hasebe-Ludt and Big Head’s (2012), we sought to... more
Deeply inspired by the praxis—and aesthetics—of literary métissage, we attempted to represent these conversations, first, to each other during our gatherings. Like Blood, Chambers, Donald, Hasebe-Ludt and Big Head’s (2012), we sought to “provoke collective wondering” (p. 48). Their work inspired us to write counternarratives in juxtaposition “to the grand narratives of our times,” to play within “the interval between different cultures and languages, particularly” within and against colonial contexts, and to merge and blur “genres, texts and identities,” where we each take up writing as “an active literary stance, political strategy, and pedagogical praxis” (Hasebe-Ludt, Chambers, & Leggo, 2009, p. 9). How might Indigenous and settler colleagues braid their stories as a praxis of reconciliation?
In preparation for the writing of our literary métissage, we each wrote three narrative strands. The interpretation, style, presentation, and interconnectivity of the strands were left deliberately open to encourage an organic engagement with the narrative representations of our lived experiences as Indigenous/settler academics. Although each strand and collective narrative is distinctly personal in respect to its authorship, collectively the strands in this chapter represent a different way of
re/member-ing. This re/member-ing is not only for us, but also for both Indigenous and settler readers to transform how they think of themselves in relation to each other. Here, we present not only a juxtaposition of our individual Indigenous/settler identities as academics, but we also propose our ‘living testimonies’ and poetic inquiries as a means of provoking a complicated conversation toward reconceptualizing our subjectivities, and our respective responsibilities as Indigenous and settler peoples.
Brant, K., Cheechoo, K., McGuire-Adams, T., Vaudrin-Charette, J., Ng-A-Fook, N. (2017). Indigenizing Ivory Towers: Poetic Inquiry, Métissage and Reconciliation. In Ellyn Lyle (Ed.). At the Intersection of Selves and Subject: Exploring the Curricular Landscape of Identity. Rotterdam The Netherlands: Sense Publisher.
In preparation for the writing of our literary métissage, we each wrote three narrative strands. The interpretation, style, presentation, and interconnectivity of the strands were left deliberately open to encourage an organic engagement with the narrative representations of our lived experiences as Indigenous/settler academics. Although each strand and collective narrative is distinctly personal in respect to its authorship, collectively the strands in this chapter represent a different way of
re/member-ing. This re/member-ing is not only for us, but also for both Indigenous and settler readers to transform how they think of themselves in relation to each other. Here, we present not only a juxtaposition of our individual Indigenous/settler identities as academics, but we also propose our ‘living testimonies’ and poetic inquiries as a means of provoking a complicated conversation toward reconceptualizing our subjectivities, and our respective responsibilities as Indigenous and settler peoples.
Brant, K., Cheechoo, K., McGuire-Adams, T., Vaudrin-Charette, J., Ng-A-Fook, N. (2017). Indigenizing Ivory Towers: Poetic Inquiry, Métissage and Reconciliation. In Ellyn Lyle (Ed.). At the Intersection of Selves and Subject: Exploring the Curricular Landscape of Identity. Rotterdam The Netherlands: Sense Publisher.
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The calls by the Ministry of Education for extended teacher education in 2012 reflect restructuring without reconceptualization, which, Grimmett (1995) argues, “does not lead to genuine change in teacher education” (p. 202). As we stated... more
The calls by the Ministry of Education for extended teacher education in 2012 reflect restructuring without reconceptualization, which, Grimmett (1995) argues, “does not lead to genuine change in teacher education” (p. 202). As we stated in our introduction, our reconceptualization of teacher education was informed by Grimmett’s three approaches to restructuring; namely restructuring
that arises out of reconceptualization. In Ontario, with the severely restrictive time allowed to reconceptualize and restructure new programs for 2015, we continue to question if we have been able to engage in a rich reconceptualization of teacher education alongside of the externally imposed restructuring to the degree that we would wish. To meet the goals articulated by Grimmett
(1995), Korthagen (2001), Kincheloe (2004), Loughran (2006), and Russell and Loughran (2007) to name but a few who call for reconceptualization of teacher education, we need to break free of the old ways of thinking about teacher education. Here, Thomas and Kane (2016) suggest that this would require significant shifts in the ways we as university-based teacher educators view our roles in the preparation of teachers, our commitment to partnerships with school-based teacher educators and how we understand one becomes a teacher. It will also most importantly require authentic and sustained collaboration with teachers and schools and key partners within the wider community. This is one of the directions we are heading as we continue to work toward developing,
implementing, and living a teacher education program that reflects a reconceptualization grounded in innovative practices and partnerships. The promises of such reconceptualization take time. Only now are we seeing some of the recommendations of the 1990s come to fruition. Time will tell, if our program lives up to its future promises.
that arises out of reconceptualization. In Ontario, with the severely restrictive time allowed to reconceptualize and restructure new programs for 2015, we continue to question if we have been able to engage in a rich reconceptualization of teacher education alongside of the externally imposed restructuring to the degree that we would wish. To meet the goals articulated by Grimmett
(1995), Korthagen (2001), Kincheloe (2004), Loughran (2006), and Russell and Loughran (2007) to name but a few who call for reconceptualization of teacher education, we need to break free of the old ways of thinking about teacher education. Here, Thomas and Kane (2016) suggest that this would require significant shifts in the ways we as university-based teacher educators view our roles in the preparation of teachers, our commitment to partnerships with school-based teacher educators and how we understand one becomes a teacher. It will also most importantly require authentic and sustained collaboration with teachers and schools and key partners within the wider community. This is one of the directions we are heading as we continue to work toward developing,
implementing, and living a teacher education program that reflects a reconceptualization grounded in innovative practices and partnerships. The promises of such reconceptualization take time. Only now are we seeing some of the recommendations of the 1990s come to fruition. Time will tell, if our program lives up to its future promises.
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In this chapter we examine how curriculum theorists, administrators, teachers and students might learn to re/frame our recognitions and/or apprehensions of each other while studying novels like Forbidden City within the curricular and... more
In this chapter we examine how curriculum theorists, administrators, teachers and students might learn to re/frame our recognitions and/or apprehensions of each other while studying novels like Forbidden City within the curricular and pedagogical contexts of a social networking site like www.ning.com. The microworlds of the educational researchers, teachers, and students in this chapter were part of a larger social action curriculum project entitled Engaging Youth Activism that sought to create a culturally-responsive media studies curriculum for marginalized youth at an adaptive vocational high school in Eastern Ontario (see Ng-A-Fook, Radford, Yazdanian, & Norris, 2013; Ng-A-Fook, Radford, & Ausman, 2012). We sought to challenge the ways in which the school curriculum is framed (or not) within such microworlds. Like Naqvi and Smits (2012), “we do not want to suggest that frames can be simply identified, deconstructed, and that it is easy to re-frame our understandings for educational purposes” (p. 10). Rather, as these two authors make clear, “frames and the idea of framing must be understood in complex terms and, …we recognize that frames and the production of frames are deeply historical, cultural, embedded in practices, sometimes oversaturated with (selective and selected) images and representations” (p. 10). To understand the complex relationships among the productive and constraining forces of such framing, we draw upon the theoretical works of Butler (2009), and Lear (2006) as we reread how subjectivities are both potentially framed, deconstructed, and reconstructed within the what Pinar (1975/2000) calls elsewhere the sanity and madness of public schooling.
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I was first introduced to the field of curriculum studies and its respective historical discursive trends during a course titled Introduction to Curriculum Studies. The course instructor just happened to be William F. Pinar who was a... more
I was first introduced to the field of curriculum studies and its respective historical discursive trends during a course titled Introduction to Curriculum Studies. The course instructor just happened to be William F. Pinar who was a visiting professor that summer term at York University. My lived curriculum within this course was indeed an intellectual turning point for me. Bill introduced us for the first time to currere, as a legitimate form of educational research within the disciplinary structures of schooling. During our coursings of that summer term he encouraged us to study, to linger, within the verticality and horizontality of the interdisciplinary and international topographies of the field we call curriculum studies. At that time, and as Bill often stressed, such intellectual study afforded myself and other students opportunities to understand the complicated conversations already taking place both outside and within what Chambers (1999, 2003) has eloquently and quite succinctly called the topos of Canadian Curriculum Studies. Therefore during our course of study with him we asked ourselves how our understandings of such historical and intellectual topographies inscribed their disciplinary trends into “our [curriculum] theorizing, as either presence or absence, whether we want them there or not” (Chambers, 1999, p. 148). Moreover our challenge at that time as burgeoning curriculum theorists, administrators, teachers, and graduate students was in many ways to reread and rewrite the various topographies of our relationships to, and with, to an old concept like “curriculum.”
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In Nicholas Ng-A-Fook’s chapter, he explores the complexity of place by outlining why science education should take multiple cultural contexts into consideration. He asks us to reconceptualize scientific praxis and to take into account... more
In Nicholas Ng-A-Fook’s chapter, he explores the complexity of place by outlining why science education should take multiple cultural contexts into consideration. He asks us to reconceptualize scientific praxis and to take into account traditional ecological knowledges in relation to local understandings of place. He reconsiders scientific practices of education through respecting and engaging with multiple perspectives that different disciplines can provide. He introduces ways of incorporating eco-justice education in literacy and media studies through a consideration of how teacher candidates can develop closer relationships with ecosystems. He explores how narrative can enable a deeper exploration of place, specifically, through paying close attention to the animals that inhabit the places that we visit and live within.
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This collection considers how embodiment, mothering, and curriculum theory are related to practices in education that silence, conceal, and limit gendered, raced, and sexual maternal bodies. Advancing a new understanding of the maternal... more
This collection considers how embodiment, mothering, and curriculum theory are related to practices in education that silence, conceal, and limit gendered, raced, and sexual maternal bodies. Advancing a new understanding of the maternal body, it argues for a 'bodied curriculum' – a practice that attends to the relational, social, and ethical implications of 'being-with' other bodies differently, and to the different knowledges such bodily encounters produce.
Reconsidering Canadian Curriculum Studies invites us to ponder, to pay attention, and to ask more of the curriculum studies we conduct. It provokes readers to study their historical topographies and their future lines of movement, while... more
Reconsidering Canadian Curriculum Studies invites us to ponder, to pay attention, and to ask more of the curriculum studies we conduct. It provokes readers to study their historical topographies and their future lines of movement, while stretching their understandings of contemporary circumstances either in Canada or abroad. The chapters cover the different geocultural and interdisciplinary territories of curriculum studies (life-writing methodologies, phenomenology, anti-racist education, gender, semiotic analysis, curriculum theorizing, cultural studies, indigenous studies, place, and others). Both established and junior scholars set forth a diverse and thought-provoking array of their lived experiences inside and outside the institutional contexts of public schooling, imagining how future Canadian curriculum scholars might advance knowledge within the broader international field of curriculum studies.
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This important new collection addresses the current state of curriculum studies in Canada. It is divided into three parts, focusing respectively on social identities, cultural perspectives, and Indigenous and environmental perspectives.... more
This important new collection addresses the current state of curriculum studies in Canada. It is divided into three parts, focusing respectively on social identities, cultural perspectives, and Indigenous and environmental perspectives. With contributors from universities across Canada, and with topics ranging from the incorporation of Aboriginal knowledge to political freedom in the classroom, from sex education to the practice of close writing, Contemporary Studies in Canadian Curriculum is an invaluable exploration of the principles and practices of curriculum theory.
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Precisely titled, this powerful collection constitutes a “chronotope,” an erudite enactment of interstices within and among historical time, spiritual place, and political culture, a recollection focused forward to those “hybrid”... more
Precisely titled, this powerful collection constitutes a “chronotope,” an erudite enactment of interstices within and among historical time, spiritual place, and political culture, a recollection focused forward to those “hybrid” generations (in Canadian classrooms) whose frontier is haunted by forts populated by not always their ancestors, inscribed in their national, regional, aboriginal identities. Homophobic, hygienic, the curriculum is always already inhabited by the language of the Other, propelling us toward “post-post” being, forested in difference, rooted in images, refracted through mirrors and windows. In constructing this crucial collage of decolonization, the contributors summon us to study with them the place we inhabit.WILLIAM F. PINAR, Professor and Canada Research Chair, Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, University Of British Columbia, Canada
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In Episode 52 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Bryan Smith a Lecturer in Humanities and Social Sciences education at James Cook University. His research looks at anti-racist and decolonizing readings of humanities and social sciences... more
In Episode 52 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Bryan Smith a Lecturer in Humanities and Social Sciences education at James Cook University. His research looks at anti-racist and decolonizing readings of humanities and social sciences education. Specifically, his work critically interrogates place, colonial and racialized logics in curriculum practice, and the convergence of history, geography, and citizenship education in re-imagining local and global places. His current line of work looks at the making of settler place and how everyday features of the urban landscape writes settler possession into the material and symbolic spaces of communities. We discussed the following: troubling his lived experiences as a white newcomer settler immigrant to Thul Garrie Waja (Townsville, Australia), memorial geographies of invasion, curriculum as invader, walking the stories of colonial ghosts, normalizing place renaming practices of settler communities, settler anxieties, critical toponomy, social studies, ethical responsibilities, and so much more.
Research Interests: History, Geography, Education, Indigenous Studies, Teacher Education, and 15 moreHistory of Education, Postcolonial Studies, Qualitative methodology, Educational Research, Social Studies Education, Curriculum Studies, Curriculum Theory, 'Decolonization' and the politics of settler state/Indigenous relations, Social Studies, Curriculum and Instruction, Toponymy, Settler Colonial Studies, Citizenship, Settler colonialism, and Democracy and Citizenship Education
In Episode 51 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Shirley & Dr. Hargreaves. Both are Research Professors at Boston College. Dr. Dennis Shirley is a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. Dr. Hargreaves is... more
In Episode 51 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Shirley & Dr. Hargreaves. Both are Research Professors at Boston College. Dr. Dennis Shirley is a Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow at the Robert Bosch Academy in Berlin. Dr. Hargreaves is Visiting Professor at UOttawa and Co-Director of a Canadian Playful Schools Network. They have collaborated as writers, teachers, speakers, and advisers for almost 20 years. We discussed some of the following issues: lived experiences as transnational migrants and academics, collaborations with ministries of education, school board leaders and teachers in Alberta, Ontario, England, and United States, life transitions, the failure to engage white working class communities, intersectionality, rethinking sympathy versus empathy, researching intergenerational macro and micro educational, historical, philosophical, political, and religious contexts during what they have titled The Age of Identity, their fifth co- authored book, and so much more.
Research Interests: History, International Relations, Philosophy, Education, Globalization, and 15 moreTeacher Education, Higher Education, Leadership, Qualitative methodology, Critical Pedagogy, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Identity (Culture), Social Justice, Pedagogy, Educational Equity and Justice, Curriculum Development, School effectiveness and school improvement, Curriculum and Instruction, and Public Policy
In Episode 50 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Stephen Hurley. Stephen Hurley is the Founder and Chief Catalyst at voicEd Radio. Combining a life-long love of radio and an intense 30-year career in public education, Stephen is passionate... more
In Episode 50 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Stephen Hurley. Stephen Hurley is the Founder and Chief Catalyst at voicEd Radio. Combining a life-long love of radio and an intense 30-year career in public education, Stephen is passionate about finding ways to enliven the public square with vibrant conversations about learning, teaching, schooling, and education in its broadest sense. We discussed some of the following issues: his lived experiences in relation to lunchtime radio stations, makerspaces, creating an online live radio and podcasting ecosystem as a public square, trial and tribulations of being a host, experimenting, negotiating, and adapting to different educational, historical, political, technological contexts as a classroom teacher and teacher educator, open concept classrooms, team teaching, life transitions, theology, philosophy, his relationship with music, being a life-long learner, and so much more.
Research Interests: Music, Music Education, Philosophy, Education, Educational Technology, and 15 moreEducational Leadership, Theology, Teacher Education, Higher Education, Qualitative methodology, Curriculum Studies, Podcasting, Radio, Digital Media & Learning, Education for Citizenship, Education Policy, Curriculum Theory, History Education, Curriculum and Instruction, and Knowledge Mobilization
In Episode 49 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Alana Butler an Assistant Professor at Queen’s University. Dr. Alana Butler’s research interests include the academic achievement of low-socio economic students, race and schooling,... more
In Episode 49 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Alana Butler an Assistant Professor at Queen’s University. Dr. Alana Butler’s research interests include the academic achievement of low-socio economic students, race and schooling, equity and inclusion, and multicultural education. We discussed some of the following issues: growing up in Scarborough, British colonial educational system in the Caribbean, decolonial love, academic streaming, immigrant families learning to transition to Canadian educational systems, pivotal role of teachers, understanding impacts of microaggressions, stereotyping expectations in relation to different racialized students as teachers, navigating the different opportunities and challenges of doctoral studies as international students, becoming an educational researcher, Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2023 Scores, community wealth, Black leadership, a social justice praxis, and so much more.
Research Interests: History, Sociology, Black Studies Or African American Studies, Education, Sociology of Education, and 15 moreTeacher Education, Assessment, Black/African Diaspora, Qualitative methodology, Critical Pedagogy, Curriculum Studies, Social Justice, Pedagogy, Internationalization, Curriculum Theory, Educational Equity and Justice, Black Women's Studies, Curriculum and Instruction, Intersectionality, and Decolonial Thought
In Episode 48 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Janice Forsyth, member of the Fisher River Cree Nation and Professor in Indigenous Land-Based Physical Culture and Wellness in the School of Kinesiology, Faculty of Education, University... more
In Episode 48 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Janice Forsyth, member of the Fisher River Cree Nation and Professor in Indigenous Land-Based Physical Culture and Wellness in the School of Kinesiology, Faculty of Education, University of British Columbia. Drawing on Indigenous epistemologies and research methodologies, Dr. Forsyth’s research combines history and sociology to understand the differing historical and contemporary relationships among sports, culture, power, and politics. We discussed some of the following issues: disenfranchisement and Bill C-31; negotiating culture on a daily basis; working through individual, systemic, and societal racisms as a student and high performance First Nations athlete; the importance of Indigenous student university centres; understanding how organized sports were, and are, used as a tool of assimilation and dispossession of Indigenous land; the legacy of residential schools; oral history research with residential school survivors; un)learning from the past and questioning approaches to “reconciliation” in sport; Indigenous understandings of health and physical education; decolonization; and so much more.
Research Interests: History, Sociology, Sociology of Sport, Education, Indigenous Studies, and 15 moreQualitative methodology, Curriculum Studies, Sports History, Oral history, Curriculum Theory, Kinesiology, Public Health, Indigenous Peoples, History of Indigenous Peoples, HIstory of Sport, Sports, Decolonization, Indigenous History, Physical Education and Sport, and Truth and Reconciliation Commissions
In Episode 47 Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Sara Florence Davidson, (Sgaan Jaadgu San Glans), a Haida/Settler Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. Her research focuses on Indigenous pedagogies,... more
In Episode 47 Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Sara Florence Davidson, (Sgaan Jaadgu San Glans), a Haida/Settler Assistant Professor in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. Her research focuses on Indigenous pedagogies, literacies, and stories. She is the co-author of Potlatch as Pedagogy: Learning through Ceremony and the Sk’ad’a Stories, a picture book series based on her family’s stories which highlights Indigenous pedagogies and intergenerational learning. We discussed some of the following issues: Wildfires in British Columbia and Northwest Territories, evacuations, impacts of climate change, love of literature, her family genealogies and histories, intersections of Indigenous and non-Indigenous pedagogies, ethical ways of collaborating with family, and interconnections among interrelatedness, synergy, research methodology and Haida traditional dancing, artists, carving intergenerational stories with family, reading, teaching, and learning about life, death, implications for teacher education, and so much more.
Research Interests: History, Education, Indigenous Studies, Media Studies, Literature, and 15 moreIndigenous education, Curriculum Studies, English, Media Education, Storytelling, Indigenous Literature, Pedagogy, Curriculum Theory, Indigenous Peoples, Visual Arts, Curriculum and Instruction, Life Writing (Literature), Settler Colonial Studies, Decolonial Thought, and Decolonization
In Episode 46 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Janet Miller, a Professor Emerita at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research transects the interdisciplinary as well as national and international borders of curriculum theorizing,... more
In Episode 46 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Janet Miller, a Professor Emerita at Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research transects the interdisciplinary as well as national and international borders of curriculum theorizing, feminisms and post-inflected versions of autobiography and qualitative research. Her research prioritizes feminist interrogations of autobiography focused on issues of difference, research, collaboration, and writing, especially in relation to potentialities of imagining and enacting curriculum communities without consensus. We discussed some of the following issues: The Global Pandemic, Maxine Greene, past, present, and future narrations of the field curriculum studies and its theorizing in- the-making, the sweaty fight for meaning and responsibility, irresolvable tensions, teaching and doing academic writing as intellectual and aesthetic processes of composing, doctoral supervision, posthumanist entanglements, transnational populist movements, and so much more.
Research Interests: Creative Writing, History, Philosophy, Education, Translation Studies, and 13 moreFeminist Theory, Literature, Posthumanism, Qualitative methodology, Curriculum Studies, English, Autobiography, Literary Theory, Internationalization, Curriculum Theory, Educational Philosophy, Curriculum and Instruction, and Intersectionality
In Episode 45 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Nichole Guillory, a Professor of Curriculum and Instruction in the Department of Secondary and Middle Grades Education and an affiliated faculty member in the Interdisciplinary Studies Department... more
In Episode 45 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Nichole Guillory, a Professor of Curriculum and Instruction in the Department of Secondary and Middle Grades Education and an affiliated faculty member in the Interdisciplinary Studies Department at Kennesaw State University. She currently teaches courses in family and community engagement in teacher education and Black feminism in interdisciplinary studies. Drawing on Black feminist theory and curriculum theory, her research focuses on Black mothering as a form of justice work. We discussed some of the following issues: Black mothering praxis and legacies, theorizing lament, sustaining our mental health and well-being during a Global Pandemic, working at predominantly white institutions, plantation politics, intersectionality, weaponizing course evaluations, disrupting Black mothering tropes, intergenerational narratives as arcs of resistance and hope, Black mother memoirs and public grieving, hip hop feminist theory, and so much more.
Research Interests: History, Black Studies Or African American Studies, Education, Feminist Theory, Black/African Diaspora, and 11 moreQualitative methodology, Curriculum Studies, Autobiography, Literary Theory, Multicultural Education, Curriculum Theory, Black feminism, Interdisciplinary Studies, Curriculum and Instruction, Intersectionality, and Biography and Life-Writing
In Episode 44 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Amal Madibbo an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Dr. Amal Madibbo shares her insights about Blackness and La... more
In Episode 44 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Amal Madibbo an Associate Professor in the Department of Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education. Dr. Amal Madibbo shares her insights about Blackness and La Francophonie. We discussed some of the following issues: her research projects in Italy, Sudan, and Louisiana, cosmopolitan citizenship, intersectionality of anti-Black racisms, African Francophone immigration, Black feminist theory, critical race theory, critical multicultural theory, linguicism, history of international and Francophonie communities here in Canada, reverse inclusion, intergenerational structural, systemic, and individual racisms, international, national, and local contributions of diasporic Black Canadian scholars’ intellectual and political work, strategic nationalism, negotiating multiple minority identities, living and working as agents of decolonization, social justice, and so much more.
Research Interests: History, Multiculturalism, Education, Black/African Diaspora, Qualitative methodology, and 14 moreEducational Research, Curriculum Studies, Francophone Africa, Multicultural Education, Curriculum Theory, Francophone Canada, Black feminism, History Education, Black Women's Studies, Curriculum and Instruction, Intersectionality, Citizenship, Decolonization, and Antiracist Education
In Episode 43 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Heather McGregor an Assistant Professor within the Faculty of Education at Queen’s University. Dr. Heather McGregor shares her insights about history education, settler colonial studies, urgency... more
In Episode 43 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Heather McGregor an Assistant Professor within the Faculty of Education at Queen’s University. Dr. Heather McGregor shares her insights about history education, settler colonial studies, urgency for us to address climate change, and the Anthropocene. We discussed some of the following issues: negotiating current contexts of COVID-19 pandemic, RSV, and flu season with our kids, curriculum theory, growing up in Iqaluit, holistic approaches to teaching and learning, wicked problems, decolonizing historical consciousness, witnessing Arctic encounters with the more-than-human world, ethical relationality, continuity and climate change, questioning the role of history education, Students on Ice, historical consciousness and thinking, radical conceptions of hope and pedagogy, addressing truth and then reconciliation with Indigenous and non-Indigenous northern youth, and so much more.
Research Interests: History, Education, Indigenous Studies, Environmental Education, Climate Change, and 10 moreTeacher Education, History of Education, Higher Education, Curriculum Studies, Environmental History, History Education, Reconciliation, Anthropocene, Curriuclum and pedagogy, and Truth and Reconciliation Commissions
In Episode 42 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Ardavan Eizadirad an Assistant Professor within the Faculty of Education at Wilfrid Laurier University. He is also the Chair of the Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Indigenization... more
In Episode 42 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Ardavan Eizadirad an Assistant Professor within the Faculty of Education at Wilfrid Laurier University. He is also the Chair of the Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Indigenization (EDI&I) Coalition. He is a community activist with the Youth Association for Academics, Athletics, and Character Education (YAAACE). Dr. Ardavan Eizadirad shares his insights about equity, diversity, and inclusion particularly standardized testing, community engagement, anti-oppressive practices, resistance, subversion, and decolonization. We discussed some of the following issues: Canadian Union of Public Employees political resistance, Ontario government’s (mis)use of “Notwithstanding Clause,” a livable wage, research as advocacy and awareness, centering voices of equity deserving groups, disrupting cultural capital of whiteness, decolonizing assessment, tattoos, immigration, civic protests in Iran, and so much more.
Research Interests: Education, Teacher Education, Assessment, Leadership, Critical Pedagogy, and 11 moreEducational Research, Community Engagement & Participation, Curriculum Studies, Critical Race Theory, Social Justice, Youth Culture, Curriculum Theory, Assessment in Higher Education, Educational Equity and Justice, Curriculum and Instruction, and Decolonizing Methodologies
In Episode 41 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Jennifer MacDonald, an Assistant Professor at University of Regina’s Faculty of Education. Dr. Jennifer MacDonald shares insights about her research on social change, ecological healing, and... more
In Episode 41 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Jennifer MacDonald, an Assistant Professor at University of Regina’s Faculty of Education. Dr. Jennifer MacDonald shares insights about her research on social change, ecological healing, and wayfinding. We discussed some of the following issues: navigating transitions in life, as a doctoral student to Assistant Professor, and to a new place, teaching with the land, protocols for cultivating relations with place as a living curriculum, walking, wayfinding, mapping, canoeing, attuning to the more than human world, unlearning and learning as non-Indigenous educators with Elders, slowing down, the flow of being together as kin on the land, reconceptualizing relational conceptions of spirituality in outdoor education, rituals of inquiry, gifting, kinship relationships, and so much more.
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In Episode 40 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Jennifer Tatebe, a senior lecturer at Auckland University’s Faculty of Education and Social Work. Dr. Jennifer Tatebe draws her different sociological and educational research expertise to share... more
In Episode 40 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Jennifer Tatebe, a senior lecturer at Auckland University’s Faculty of Education and Social Work. Dr. Jennifer Tatebe draws her different sociological and educational research expertise to share insights on hers and others lived experienced during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Aotearoa New Zealand. We discussed some of the following issues: navigating pandemic protocols in Aotearoa New Zealand, rurban sociological studies, educational impacts of immigration and housing policies for rural schools, transitional tensions for school leaders and teachers, social justice, addressing poverty, equity, and inclusion within the financial literacy curriculum, negotiating the gauntlet of tenure and promotion in higher education, and so much more.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Sociology, Education, Indigenous Studies, Sociology of Education, and 13 moreNew Zealand Studies, Higher Education, Qualitative methodology, Critical Pedagogy, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Urban Education, Urban Planning, Migration, Financial Literacy, Youth Culture, Curriculum Theory, and Rurbanization
In Episode 39 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Jennifer Markides an Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary. Dr. Jennifer Markides shares her insights as a Métis scholar in relation to the 2013 High River flood and during the current... more
In Episode 39 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Jennifer Markides an Assistant Professor at the University of Calgary. Dr. Jennifer Markides shares her insights as a Métis scholar in relation to the 2013 High River flood and during the current COVID-19 Pandemic. She received the 2021 Dissertation Award from the Canadian Association of Curriculum Studies for her doctoral study, titled “Wisdom and Well-being Post-Disaster: Stories Told by Youth.” We discussed some of the following issues: youth led research, impacts of natural disasters on the mental health and well-being of youth, rethinking the school curriculum, counter stories, radical listening, creating respectful and ethical relations with the more-than-human world, each other, holistic conceptions of living well, Montessori philosophy, sharing power, identity politics, Métis scholarship, and so much more.
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In Episode 38, Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Rob Helfenbein a Professor of Curriculum Studies in the Tift College of Education at Mercer University. Dr. Rob Helfenbein draws on research as a critical geographer and curriculum theorist to... more
In Episode 38, Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Rob Helfenbein a Professor of Curriculum Studies in the Tift College of Education at Mercer University. Dr. Rob Helfenbein draws on research as a critical geographer and curriculum theorist to share his insights on his lived experience during the COVID-19 pandemic. We discussed some of the following issues: American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies (AAACS), transitioning to a new place, Black Lives Matter uprisings in Baltimore implications for scholars, political landscape in Georgia, unsettling beliefs in teacher education, cultural studies, spatial thinking, banning of teaching divisive concepts in public schools, new materialism, posthumanism, intellectual and critical geographies of historical and contemporary racialized and material segregations, time, space, and place, Bergamo Conference, living in the shadows of “freedom,” and so much more.
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In Episode 37 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Celia Haig-Brown a documentary filmmaker and Professor at York University. Dr. Haig-Brown draws on decolonizing approaches to share her insights on what we might learn from, and with, different... more
In Episode 37 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Celia Haig-Brown a documentary filmmaker and Professor at York University. Dr. Haig-Brown draws on decolonizing approaches to share her insights on what we might learn from, and with, different First Nations communities. We discussed some of the following issues: Ukrainian-Russian conflict, COVID-19 Pandemic, lived experiences with Indigenous teacher education programs, teaching and learning with First Nations mothers, challenges of documentary filmmaking as SSHRC-funded research, Listening to the Land, Resistance and Renewal, collaborating with the Naskapi Nation and different filmmakers, film editing, decolonizing university research ethics policy and procedures, troubling non-Indigenous researchers positionalities, future collaborations with families who have intergenerational relations with the Kamloops Residential School, and so much more.
Research Interests: History, Cultural Studies, Ethics, Education, Indigenous Studies, and 13 moreTeacher Education, Ethnography, Higher Education, Qualitative methodology, Curriculum Studies, Curriculum Theory, Documentary Film, Curriculum and Instruction, Settler Colonial Studies, First Nations of Canada, Curriculum, Curriculum and Pedagogy, and Truth and Reconciliation Commissions
In Episode 35 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Carl E. James who holds the Jean Augustine Chair in Education and is the Senior Advisor on Equity and Representation in the Office of the Vice President of Equity, People and Culture at York... more
In Episode 35 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Carl E. James who holds the Jean Augustine Chair in Education and is the Senior Advisor on Equity and Representation in the Office of the Vice President of Equity, People and Culture at York University. Dr. Carl E. James draws on the intersectionality of race with ethnicity, gender, class, and citizenship to discuss the lived experiences of marginalized community members. We discussed some of the following issues: negotiating the 4th wave of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Colour Matters, different sociological research methods, longitudinal impacts, being a 1.5 generation Canadian citizen, negotiating the neoliberal individual, structural and societal materialisms of anti-black racisms, enabling and disabling Black youth within public schooling and higher education, disrupting the web of “at risk” stereotypes, migration to suburbs and implications, agency, and so much more.
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Black Studies Or African American Studies, African Studies, Education, Sociology of Education, and 15 moreTeacher Education, Human Rights, Higher Education, Leadership, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Immigration Studies, Critical Race Theory, Race and Ethnicity, Social Justice, Curriculum Theory, Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education, Curriculum, Antiracist Education, and Democracy and Citizenship Education
In Episode 34 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Paul Tarc is an Associate Professor at Western University. Dr. Paul Tarc draws on post-informed theories of representation, ethics, and cosmopolitan critical literacies to share his insights and... more
In Episode 34 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Paul Tarc is an Associate Professor at Western University. Dr. Paul Tarc draws on post-informed theories of representation, ethics, and cosmopolitan critical literacies to share his insights and feelings about the COVID-19 Pandemic. We discussed some of the following issues: negotiating the pandemic at home and work, neoliberal elite economic conceptions of higher education as revenue generation institutions, teaching overseas, internationalization, transnationalism, international students, cosmopolitan literacies, relations of power, privilege, nation-state and university branding, teacher education, troubling the limits of claiming criticality, education without guarantees, tempering social justice pedagogical motivations, and so much more.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, International Relations, Education, Teacher Education, Higher Education, and 14 moreEducational Research, Curriculum Studies, Cosmopolitan Studies, International Education, Cosmopolitanism, Internationalization, Curriculum Theory, Qualitative Research, New Literacy Studies (Education), Diaspora and transnationalism, Curriculum, Internationalization of higher education, Graduate Studies, and Democracy and Citizenship Education
In Episode 33 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Taliaferro Baszile, an Associate Dean of Diversity and Student Experience and Professor of Curriculum & Cultural Studies in the Department of Educational Leadership at Miami University. Dr.... more
In Episode 33 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Taliaferro Baszile, an Associate Dean of Diversity and Student Experience and Professor of Curriculum & Cultural Studies in the Department of Educational Leadership at Miami University. Dr. Taliaferro Baszile, draws on black feminist, critical race, and curriculum theories to share her insights and feelings about the COVID-19 Pandemic. We discussed some of the following issues: living as a family and higher education leader during a Pandemic, ideological failures of Democracy, teaching freedom in the language of oppression, re/curricularizing “the” standard “White American” curriculum, enacting protest within the space out of love, reimagining a world beyond a narratively condemned status, Ellisonian eyes, ontoepistemological qualities of a free mind, currere, Bergamo, and so much more.
Research Interests: Black Studies Or African American Studies, Education, Teacher Education, Higher Education, Leadership, and 15 moreEducational Research, Curriculum Studies, Critical Race Theory, Social Justice, Autobiography, Curriculum Theory, Educational Equity and Justice, Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education, Black Women's Studies, Black Feminist Theory/Thought, Curriculum and Instruction, Life Writing (Literature), Curriculum, Democracy and Citizenship Education, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
In Episode 32 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Sean Carleton, an Assistant Professor in the Departments of History and Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Treaty 1 territory and the homeland of the Métis... more
In Episode 32 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Sean Carleton, an Assistant Professor in the Departments of History and Indigenous Studies at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Treaty 1 territory and the homeland of the Métis Nation. Dr. Sean Carleton, draws on the fields of history, settler colonial studies, economics, and education to share his insights on the historical contexts of the COVID-19 Pandemic, Truth, and then Reconciliation Education. We discussed some of the following issues: Canadian Federal election, colonial logics of elimination, nationalistic racist representations in history textbooks, history of schooling in British Columbia, settler denial and anxiety, role of historians, schools, and Church in supporting the colonial project, media, meaningful nation-to-nation relations, Idle No More, and so much more.
Research Interests: History, Social Movements, Education, Teacher Education, History of Education, and 14 moreEducational Research, Curriculum Studies, Education History, Social Justice, Oral history, Qualitative Research, Reconciliation, Settler Colonial Studies, First Nations of Canada, Curriculum, Settler Colonialism & Its Legacies, Settler colonialism, Nationalism and Decolonization, and Truth and Reconciliation Commissions
In Episode 31 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Michael Cappello, an Associate Professor at the University of Regina. Dr. Cappello draws on educational core studies and anti-oppressive education to share his insights on people’s diverse lived... more
In Episode 31 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Michael Cappello, an Associate Professor at the University of Regina. Dr. Cappello draws on educational core studies and anti-oppressive education to share his insights on people’s diverse lived experiences with the COVID-19 Pandemic, in relation to Treaty 4, and “It’s ok to be (Against) White(ness).” We discussed some of the following issues: neoliberal politics and economics of a pandemic, global inequities accessing COVID-19 vaccines, a settler colonial worldview and ideologies of capitalism, race and racisms, racialized systems of advantage, whiteness and its systemic inclusive privileges, unsettling stories of dominance, reimagining citizenship and restorying (restoring) our treaty relations, intergenerational impacts of the Indian Residential Schooling system, legacy of state sponsored policing, troubling token land acknowledgements, Federal election, and so much more.
Research Interests: Teacher Education, History of Education, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Critical Race Theory, and 12 moreSocial Justice, Curriculum Theory, Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education, Social Justice Education, Reconciliation, Critical Whiteness Studies, Settler Colonial Studies, First Nations of Canada, Curriculum, Settler Colonialism & Its Legacies, Democracy and Citizenship Education, and Nationalism and Decolonization
In Episode 30 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Erin Jessee, a senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow. Dr. Jessee draws on oral historical and ethnographic methods to share her insights on people’s diverse lived experiences with... more
In Episode 30 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Erin Jessee, a senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow. Dr. Jessee draws on oral historical and ethnographic methods to share her insights on people’s diverse lived experiences with genocide, mass atrocities, and the COVID-19 Pandemic.
We discussed some of the following issues: living and working in Glasgow, forensic archeology, anthropology, and oral history research methods, mass grave exhumations, human rights violations, differing conceptions of justice and reconciliation in relation to a post-genocide Rwandan context, ethical and political dilemmas, privileged and/or excluded voices, transference, mental health, well-being, and minimizing harm, the limits of oral history, normalizing systemic violence and harms, examining one’s complicity, trauma-informed pedagogies, her co-authored graphic novel Nyiragitwa: Daughter of Sacyega, and so much more.
We discussed some of the following issues: living and working in Glasgow, forensic archeology, anthropology, and oral history research methods, mass grave exhumations, human rights violations, differing conceptions of justice and reconciliation in relation to a post-genocide Rwandan context, ethical and political dilemmas, privileged and/or excluded voices, transference, mental health, well-being, and minimizing harm, the limits of oral history, normalizing systemic violence and harms, examining one’s complicity, trauma-informed pedagogies, her co-authored graphic novel Nyiragitwa: Daughter of Sacyega, and so much more.
Research Interests: History, Anthropology, Education, Peace and Conflict Studies, Human Rights, and 13 moreGenocide Studies, Post-conflict Reconstruction and Development, Education History, International Human Rights Law, Social Justice, Trauma Studies, Oral history, Social Justice in Education, Forensic Archaeology, Reconciliation, Comics and Graphic Novels, Post-Conflict Reconciliation, and Rwandan Genocide
In Episode 29 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Petra Munro Hendry, an Endowed Professor Emeritus of the St. Bernard Chapter of the Louisiana State University Alumni Association. Dr. Munro Hendry draws on curriculum studies, history, and... more
In Episode 29 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Petra Munro Hendry, an Endowed Professor Emeritus of the St. Bernard Chapter of the Louisiana State University Alumni Association. Dr. Munro Hendry draws on curriculum studies, history, and philosophy to share her wisdom on the practice of history in relation to the COVID-19 Pandemic, curriculum history, and a history of education from a transatlantic perspective. We discussed some of the following issues: the labour of writing, the inhumane “academy,” scientism, dis-ease with fear, militarization of modern medicine, distancing trauma, viral epistemology of love, compassion, macro and micro historical entanglements, intra-actions, assemblages of trans-Atlantic educational spaces, rogue curriculum, creole pedagogies of enslaved Africans and Indigenous peoples, Haitian revolution, counterpublics, moral equality, a universal global community, reimagining conceptions of the “educated” citizen, and so much more.
Research Interests: History, Gender Studies, Teacher Education, History of Education, Gender History, and 13 moreEducational Research, Curriculum Studies, Transatlantic History, Oral history, Curriculum Theory, Curriculum History, Transatlantic Literature, Curriculum and Instruction, Settler Colonial Studies, Louisiana history, History of teacher education, Democracy and Citizenship Education, and Nationalism and Decolonization
In Episode 28 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. John Weaver, a Professor of Curriculum Studies at Georgia Southern University. Dr. Weaver draws on his interdisciplinary intellectual work on science, curriculum, and democracy to share his... more
In Episode 28 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. John Weaver, a Professor of Curriculum Studies at Georgia Southern University. Dr. Weaver draws on his interdisciplinary intellectual work on science, curriculum, and democracy to share his philosophical insights on our lived experiences inside and outside the “university” before, during, and after COVID-19. We discussed some of the following issues: providing essential services to the public, rhetoric of science, economics, reimagining the “university” beyond intellectual traps and administrative busywork, anti-intellectualism, limits of boustrophedonic writing, becoming active in political life, addressing error, art of creating vaccinations, illusions of order and certainty, a critique of science education, science fiction and its speculative insights, perspectivalism, and so much more.
Research Interests:
In Episode 27 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Cindy Blackstock, a member of the Gitxsan First Nation and the Executive Director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society (FNCFCS). Dr. Blackstock, a Professor in the School of... more
In Episode 27 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Cindy Blackstock, a member of the Gitxsan First Nation and the Executive Director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society (FNCFCS). Dr. Blackstock, a Professor in the School of Social Work at McGill University, draws on her interdisciplinary research, Indigenous theories, and social justice advocacy to share insights on the ongoing intergenerational systemic inequities for First Nations children and youth. We discussed some of the following issues: Canada’s inequitable provisions of First Nations child and family services, Mosquito Activism, social movements, moral courage and love, Breath of Life Theory, the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal recommendations, Jordan’s Principle, media, TRC Calls to Action, Spirit Bear, the FNCFCS campaigns, and so much more.
Research Interests: Education, Teacher Education, Human Rights, Curriculum Studies, Human Rights Education, and 15 moreCurriculum Theory, Indigenous Movements, Indigenous Peoples, Children's Rights, 'Decolonization' and the politics of settler state/Indigenous relations, Settler Colonial Studies, First Nations of Canada, First Nations History, Early Childhood Care and Education, Maternal and Child Health, Settler Colonialism & Its Legacies, Settler colonialism, First Nations, Decolonizing Education, and K to 12 Basic Education Curriculum
In Episode 26 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Walter S. Gershon an Associate Professor of Critical Foundations of Education at Rowan University. Dr. Walter S. Gershon draws on curriculum, sensory and sound studies to share insights in... more
In Episode 26 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Walter S. Gershon an Associate Professor of Critical Foundations of Education at Rowan University. Dr. Walter S. Gershon draws on curriculum, sensory and sound studies to share insights in relation to the COVID-19 Pandemic and systemic racisms. We discussed some of the following issues: accessibility to COVID-19 vaccinations, Sound Arts-Based Research (SABR), sonic theorizing, reverberations and resonances, confluences of being a musician and educational researcher, hearing and mishearing, Ridiculous White Institutions, policing normalcy, historical narrative wars, Franklin Bobbitt and legacy of Eugenics, everyday Afrosurreal experiences, Critical Race Theory, institutional violence, ethical dilemmas collaborating with communities, and so much more.
Research Interests: Music, Music Theory, Philosophy, Education, Teacher Education, and 11 moreHigher Education, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Critical Race Theory, Curriculum Theory, Educational Philosophy, Narrative Inquiry, Curriculum, Arts-Based Educational Research, Curriculum Theory and Development, and Educational studies
In Episode 25 Dr. Ng-A-Fook hosts Dr. Cristyne Hebert, an assistant professor in Assessment and Evaluation at the University of Regina. Dr. Cristyne Hebert draws on curriculum studies, digital literacies and pedagogies, and assessment... more
In Episode 25 Dr. Ng-A-Fook hosts Dr. Cristyne Hebert, an assistant professor in Assessment and Evaluation at the University of Regina. Dr. Cristyne Hebert draws on curriculum studies, digital literacies and pedagogies, and assessment research to share insights on her lived experiences during the COVID-19 Pandemic. We discussed some of the following issues: roll out of COVID-19 vaccinations in Saskatchewan and Ontario, possibilities and limitations of online teaching and learning, digital parents, storytelling, and literacies, postdoctoral research, the impacts of the Educative Teacher Performance Assessment process in United States, online remote proctoring, assessment and data surveillance, artificial intelligence, media literacy, American Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies, audit culture, and so much more.
Research Interests: Information Technology, Education, Educational Technology, Teacher Education, Assessment, and 11 moreEducational Research, Curriculum Studies, Critical Thinking, Media Literacy, Curriculum Theory, Qualitative Research, Curriculum Development, Curriculum and Instruction, Curriculum, Makerspaces, and Curriculum and Educational Technology
In Episode 24 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Catherine Duquette, an Associate Professor of Social Studies and History Education at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC). Dr. Catherine Duquette draws on the different disciplinary... more
In Episode 24 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Catherine Duquette, an Associate Professor of Social Studies and History Education at the Université du Québec à Chicoutimi (UQAC). Dr. Catherine Duquette draws on the different disciplinary dimensions of history education and assessment to share insights on her lived experiences as a university educator during the COVID-19 Pandemic. We discussed some of the following issues and concepts: negotiating 3rd Wave and lockdowns as parents, online teacher education collaborations with teachers and teacher candidates, Québec schooling system, adapting to progression models for historical thinking, the impact of provincial examination for history education and the question of assessment, historical consciousness, deconstructing and reconstructing historical narratives with students, and so much more.
Research Interests:
Lors de l’émission no. 23, le professeur Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interroge Sara Schroeter qui est professeure adjointe en didactique de l’art dramatique à la Faculté d’éducation à l’Université de Régina. Au cours de leur conversation, Sara... more
Lors de l’émission no. 23, le professeur Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interroge Sara Schroeter qui est professeure adjointe en didactique de l’art dramatique à la Faculté d’éducation à l’Université de Régina. Au cours de leur conversation, Sara Schroeter s’appuie sur la théorie critique des races, l’art dramatique et le théâtre de l’opprimé pour partager ses connaissances comme chercheuse au sujet des écoles de langue française en milieux minoritaires. Nous discutons de l’actualité et des concepts suivants: la pandémie de la COVID-19, les iniquités à ce sujet pour les femmes et les communautés racisées, l’accès (ou non) aux technologies de communication et de l’information, le racisme systémique, l’antiracisme noir, le colonialisme, le sexisme, le genre, et la classe sociale, la multimodalité et l’art dramatique comme littératie corporelle, ainsi que divers registres langagiers qui incluent ou excluent différentes accentuations de la diction, du débit, de la prononciation, de l’intonation, et plus encore.
Research Interests:
In Episode 22 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Tasha Ausman, a Part-Time Professor at the University of Ottawa, and a full-time science and mathematics teacher with Western Quebec School Board. During their conversation, Dr. Tasha Ausman... more
In Episode 22 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Tasha Ausman, a Part-Time Professor at the University of Ottawa, and a full-time science and mathematics teacher with Western Quebec School Board. During their conversation, Dr. Tasha Ausman draws on decolonizing, psychoanalytic, and post-colonial frameworks to share insights on her lived experiences as a classroom teacher during the COVID-19 Pandemic. We discussed some of the following issues and concepts: teacher safety and security, rethinking one’s pedagogy and relations with students, understanding and responding to mathematic anxieties, navigating psychic and emotional vulnerabilities, being in families’ homes virtually, toward decolonizing one’s school community, troubling spiritual and cultural appropriations of Yoga, musical life, and so much more.
Research Interests:
In Episode 21 I interview Dr. Amélie Lemieux an Assistant Professor at Mount St. Vincent University. During our conversation, Dr. Amélie Lemieux draws on phenomenology, posthumanism, and literacy studies to share her insights on living,... more
In Episode 21 I interview Dr. Amélie Lemieux an Assistant Professor at Mount St. Vincent University. During our conversation, Dr. Amélie Lemieux draws on phenomenology, posthumanism, and literacy studies to share her insights on living, teaching and researching during the COVID-19 Pandemic. We discussed some of the following issues and concepts: Atlantic snowstorms, teaching online, deconstructing literacies, mapping methodologies, life history in Montreal, learning to speak English at school, translation, plurilingual entanglements, agential cuts, transdisciplinarity, makerspace research and education, pedagogical experimentations, process-focus making, poetry, art, multimodal frameworks, material combinations, tinkering, literacy events, material and affective contexts of the classroom, thinking diffractively and so much more.
Research Interests: Philosophy, Education, Teacher Education, Ethnography, Digital Literacy, and 15 morePosthumanism, Educational Research, Learning and Teaching, Curriculum Studies, Phenomenology, Media Literacy, Curriculum Theory, Critical Posthumanism, Virtual Ethnography, Qualitative Research, Phenomenology (Research Methodology), Curriculum and Instruction, New Materialisms, Makerspaces, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
In Episode 20 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Lisa Farley, an Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Research, at York University. During their conversation, Dr. Farley draws on psychoanalysis, childhood studies, and history education to... more
In Episode 20 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Lisa Farley, an Associate Professor and Associate Dean of Research, at York University. During their conversation, Dr. Farley draws on psychoanalysis, childhood studies, and history education to share her insights on living and working during the COVID-19 Pandemic. They discuss some of the following issues and concepts: Atlantic bubble, wearing masks, family pack walks in Toronto, serving her research community, child analyst D.W. Winnicott’s work, interpreting public emergency policies, tropes of childhood memories, innocence, nuisance making, playful antics, punishable acts, troubling settler colonial figures of the “child,” a psychoanalytic critique of debates related to “rapid onset gender dysphoria,” ethics of free association and free speech, and so much more.
Research Interests: Discourse Analysis, History, Ethics, Teacher Education, Transgender Studies, and 14 moreHistory Of Psychoanalysis, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Education History, Podcasting, Curriculum Theory, Memory Studies, Theories of Gender and Transgender, Qualitative Research, Curriculum and Instruction, Psychoanalytic Theory, Childhood and Youth Studies, Early Childhood Teacher Education, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
In Episode 19 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews T. Mayheart Dardar an Elder, grandfather, father, husband, son of a trawler, marine mechanic, student of martial arts, teacher, and citizen of the United Houma Nation. During their conversation, T.... more
In Episode 19 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews T. Mayheart Dardar an Elder, grandfather, father, husband, son of a trawler, marine mechanic, student of martial arts, teacher, and citizen of the United Houma Nation. During their conversation, T. Mayheart Dardar shares his perspectives as a public intellectual, historian, poet, former politician, and writer in relation to the educational, historical, and political settler contexts of Louisiana. They discuss some of the following concepts: COVID-19, love of reading, oil and gas industry, land erosion and coastal restoration, the hurricane season, Houma women leaders, Federal recognition, troubling Eurocentric academic anthropological and historical perspectives, questioning the value system of an extraction settler economy, and so much more.
Research Interests: History, Economics, Anthropology, Education, Indigenous Studies, and 15 moreTeacher Education, Political Theory, Indigenous education, Qualitative methodology, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Political Science, Oral history, Curriculum Theory, Environmental Sustainability, 'Decolonization' and the politics of settler state/Indigenous relations, Curriculum and Instruction, Settler Colonial Studies, American Indian Studies, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
In Episode 18 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Awad Ibrahim, an internationally renowned Professor at the University of Ottawa. During their conversation, Dr. Ibrahim shares his perspectives as a curriculum theorist in relation to the economy... more
In Episode 18 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Awad Ibrahim, an internationally renowned Professor at the University of Ottawa. During their conversation, Dr. Ibrahim shares his perspectives as a curriculum theorist in relation to the economy of hospitality and COVID-19. They discuss some of the following concepts: being a new dad, privileges of being a universal subject, unconditional hospitality, Black popular culture, what might matter to youth, the explicit, hidden, and null curriculum, schooling versus education, ignorant schoolmaster, Hip-Hop as poetic social, historical, and political theorizing, African immigrant youth translating and negotiating becoming Black in Canada, rhizomatic multinational and multilingual excesses of Blackness, racial injustice, Black excellence, and so much more.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Black Studies Or African American Studies, International Relations, Philosophy, and 15 moreEducation, Youth Studies, Teacher Education, Research Methodology, Popular Culture, Black/African Diaspora, Critical Pedagogy, Curriculum Studies, Pedagogy, Curriculum Theory, Curriculum Development, Curriculum and Instruction, Hip-Hop Studies, Curriculum and Pedagogy, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
In Episode 17, Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Samuel D. Rocha, a philosopher and curriculum theorist at University of British Columbia. During their conversation, Dr. Rocha shares his perspectives as a phenomenologist, musician, artist, and... more
In Episode 17, Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Samuel D. Rocha, a philosopher and curriculum theorist at University of British Columbia. During their conversation, Dr. Rocha shares his perspectives as a phenomenologist, musician, artist, and Mexican-American in relation to the 2020 United States election and The Syllabus as Curriculum. They discuss some of the following concepts: experiencing and crossing intellectual and material borders, folk phenomenology, reductions of time and memory, “art precedes metaphysics” and the “offering,” playing jazz, hegemonic presence of social sciences in Faculties of Education, a non-Apology of the humanities, posthumanism and post-qualitative research, promethean forewarnings, teacher as luthier, cheeky questions, shitty curriculum, teacher education, and so much more.
Research Interests: Philosophy, Education, Humanities, Teacher Education, Philosophy of Education, and 12 morePosthumanism, Qualitative methodology, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Phenomenology, Curriculum Theory, Curriculum and Instruction, Citizenship, Curriculum, Arts and Humanities, Social Foundations of Education, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
In Episode 16, Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Boni Wozolek, an Assistant Professor of Education at Penn State University, Abington College. During their conversation, Dr. Wozolek shares her perspectives as a queer woman of colour in... more
In Episode 16, Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Boni Wozolek, an Assistant Professor of Education at Penn State University, Abington College. During their conversation, Dr. Wozolek shares her perspectives as a queer woman of colour in relation to the current 2020 Pandemic, Queer Battle Fatigue, and School-to-Coffin Pipeline. They discuss some of the following concepts: working and mothering as an academic, negotiating capitals of shame, 2020 Presidential Debate, hidden curriculum of human and non-human intra-actions of violence, living a soundscape curriculum, pedagogy and research as quantum entanglements, an ethics of collecting sounds, policing bodies, gender, sexuality, racisms, the sounds of LGBTQ2 students breaking, homophobia, transphobia, suicide, self-harm, resistance, refusal, Black Excellence and so much more.
Research Interests: Gender Studies, Queer Studies, Education, Feminist Theory, Youth Studies, and 13 moreQualitative methodology, Critical Pedagogy, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Gender and Sexuality, Social Justice, Soundscape Studies, Curriculum Theory, Critical Posthumanism, Curriculum Development, Curriculum and Instruction, Curriuclum and pedagogy, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
In this fifteenth episode, Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Keri Cheechoo, an Assistant Professor specializing in Indigenous Education at the University of Ottawa. During their conversation, Dr. Cheechoo shares her perspectives as an... more
In this fifteenth episode, Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Keri Cheechoo, an Assistant Professor specializing in Indigenous Education at the University of Ottawa. During their conversation, Dr. Cheechoo shares her perspectives as an Iskwew, (Cree woman), daughter, mom, kookum, auntie, cousin, poet, and teacher from Long Lake #58 First Nation in relation to living in harmony. They discuss some of the following concepts: grandparenting, living as ceremony, dreaming of ancestral medicines, agency, regulating and sterilizing Indigenous women’s bodies, legacies of the Indian Residential Schooling system, Orange Shirt Day, relearning intergenerational relations, land acknowledgments, treaties, poetic inquiry, art, Pimatisiwin, a Nisgaa research methodology, trauma, healing, respecting dignity, reconciliation, regeneration, relationality, and so much more.
Research Interests: History, Education, Indigenous Studies, Teacher Education, History of Education, and 14 moreEducational Research, Curriculum Studies, Poetry, Indigenous Politics, Podcasting, Indigenous Knowledge, Curriculum Theory, Indigenous Peoples Rights, Indigenous Peoples, Visual Arts, Reconciliation, Curriculum and Instruction, First Nations of Canada, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
In this fourteenth episode, Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Adrian Downey, an Assistant Professor at Mount Saint Vincent University. During their conversation, Dr. Downey shares his speculations as a Mi'kmaw curriculum theorist and... more
In this fourteenth episode, Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Adrian Downey, an Assistant Professor at Mount Saint Vincent University. During their conversation, Dr. Downey shares his speculations as a Mi'kmaw curriculum theorist and posthumanist scholar in relation to the current 2020 COVID-19 pandemic. They discuss some of the following concepts: writing during and within the COVID-19 Atlantic bubble, distinctions between the necropolitical, zoepolitical and biopolitical, critical feminist posthumanism, Indigenous curriculum theorizing, scholars, and scholarship, affect, compost, settler colonialism, dangers of advanced capitalism and wet markets, ecological education, literacies of the land, attending relationally as humans to becoming-with waste, the more-than-human, non-human worlds and so much more.
Research Interests: Indigenous Studies, Teacher Education, Indigenous education, Posthumanism, Educational Research, and 13 moreCurriculum Studies, Podcasting, Health Education, Ecology, Curriculum Theory, Critical Posthumanism, Qualitative Research, Environmental Sustainability, Indigenous Peoples, Curriculum and Instruction, Thesis, Curriculum Theory and Development, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
In this thirteenth episode, Dr. Dwayne Donald interviews Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook, a Professor of Curriculum Studies at the University of Ottawa. During their conversation, Dr. Ng-A-Fook shares his perspectives as a curriculum theorist in... more
In this thirteenth episode, Dr. Dwayne Donald interviews Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook, a Professor of Curriculum Studies at the University of Ottawa. During their conversation, Dr. Ng-A-Fook shares his perspectives as a curriculum theorist in relation to the 2020 Pandemic. They discuss some of the following concepts: online and distance learning, teacher agility, flexibility, care, and professionalism, currere, experimenting with a podcasting curriculum, the international field of curriculum studies, human migrations, living in rural and urban communities in Canada and the United States, life history research, unlearning, learning, and serving with the United Houma Nation, oral history research, racialized segregations, restorying settler historical consciousness and so much more.
Research Interests: History, Teaching and Learning, Education, Indigenous Studies, Teacher Education, and 15 moreCurriculum Design, History of Education, Higher Education, Critical Pedagogy, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Oral history, Podcasting, Life history, Curriculum Theory, Curriculum and Instruction, Biography and Life-Writing, Graduate Studies, Curriculum and Pedagogy, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
In this twelfth episode, Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. William F. Pinar, Tetsuo T. Aoki Professor at the University of British Columbia. During their conversation, Dr. Pinar shares his perspectives as a curriculum theorist and lived... more
In this twelfth episode, Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. William F. Pinar, Tetsuo T. Aoki Professor at the University of British Columbia. During their conversation, Dr. Pinar shares his perspectives as a curriculum theorist and lived experiences in relation to the 2020 Pandemic and Anti-Black Racism Protests in the United States. He discusses some of the following concepts: systemic inequities, different temporal dimensions of currere, curriculum policy reform and reorganization, populist movements, instrumentalism, existential philosophy, cautionary notes on the use of technology, social media, and news feeds, reactivation, reconstruction, Black feminist autobiographical research, allegories of an American South, Weimar Republic, and Harlem Renaissance, subjectivity, and so much more.
Research Interests: History, Philosophy, Education, Media Studies, Humanities, and 15 moreEducational Technology, Teacher Education, Curriculum Design, History of Education, Higher Education, Curriculum Studies, Autobiography, Literary Theory, Education Policy, Curriculum Theory, Curriculum and Instruction, Curriculum Theory and Development, Curriculum and Pedagogy, Curriculum and Educational Technology, and Public Policy
In this eleventh episode, Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Kiera (Kaia'tano:ron) Brant-Birioukov, a Haudenosaunee doctoral candidate studying at the University of British Columbia. During their conversation, Kiera shares her perspectives as an... more
In this eleventh episode, Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Kiera (Kaia'tano:ron) Brant-Birioukov, a Haudenosaunee doctoral candidate studying at the University of British Columbia. During their conversation, Kiera shares her perspectives as an Onkwehón:we curriculum scholar in relation to the 2020 Pandemic. They discuss some of the following concepts: seasonal knowledge, renewal, a returning to Elders' teachings, land, prophecies, educational estrangement, ethical relational spaces, transformational pops, whose water are we standing on, Haudenosaunee and Kanenstóhare theories, curriculum studies, homecoming, being an uninvited guest, spirit and ceremony in education, a post-TRC educational landscape, Indigenous autobiography, a corn soup research methodology, and so much more.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, History, Cultural Studies, Indigenous Studies, Teacher Education, and 15 moreCurriculum Design, History of Education, Narrative, Critical Pedagogy, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Indigenous Politics, Autobiography, Indigenous Knowledge, Curriculum Theory, Curriculum Development, Curriculum and Instruction, First Nations of Canada, Curriculum and Pedagogy, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
In this tenth episode, Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Irwin, former Associate Dean of Teacher Education at the University of British Columbia. During their conversation, Dr. Irwin shares her perspectives as an a/rtist, r/esearcher,... more
In this tenth episode, Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Irwin, former Associate Dean of Teacher Education at the University of British Columbia. During their conversation, Dr. Irwin shares her perspectives as an a/rtist, r/esearcher, t/eacher, and writer in the “Wake” of the COVID-19 Pandemic. She discusses some of the following concepts: slow scholarship, walking as an embodiment “being” and “becoming” in the world beyond the ineffable, gender issues, ongoing evolution of a/r/tography, existential potentials, renderings of living artistic inquiries, practices, processes, and concepts as methods, new materialism, image-making with graduate students, intravention versus intervention, teaching Grade 6, limits of representationalism, her pedagogy, and so much more.
Research Interests:
In this ninth episode, Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Timothy J. Stanley, former Interim Dean of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies @uOttawa. During their conversation, Dr. Stanley shares his perspectives as a historian about... more
In this ninth episode, Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Timothy J. Stanley, former Interim Dean of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies @uOttawa. During their conversation, Dr. Stanley shares his perspectives as a historian about the invisibility of everyday racisms in Canada. He discusses some of the following concepts: the rise of anti-Chinese racisms, the tragic death of Colten Boushie, the grammar of settler colonial racializations, racisms, and organized exclusions, the genealogy of Canadian settler property rights, removing monuments, the genealogical privileging of certain inclusions and exclusions, living in Montreal as a mixed race youth, banning public expressions of faith in Quebec, the removal of national statues, living in China, and so much more.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, History, Cultural Studies, Teacher Education, History of Education, and 11 moreHigher Education, Race and Racism, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Oral history, East Asian Studies, Curriculum Development, Curriculum and Instruction, Settler Colonial Studies, Curriculum and Pedagogy, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
In this eighth episode, Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Theodore Christou, Associate Dean at the Queen’s University. During their conversation, Dr. Christou shares his perspectives as a philosopher, historian, and humanist in relation to the... more
In this eighth episode, Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Theodore Christou, Associate Dean at the Queen’s University. During their conversation, Dr. Christou shares his perspectives as a philosopher, historian, and humanist in relation to the 2020 Pandemic. He discusses some of the following concepts: traditional and progressive education, homelessness, philosophers, empathy, collective public security, living toward democracy, an inadequate social system for Elders, pivoting, limits of 21st Century learning, mental testing, social efficiency, streaming, a fortifying curriculum, studying characters of the humanities and changes within Ontario public schooling, the Great Depression, city states, travel, hybrid identities, legacies of settler colonialism and its faith, hope, and so much more.
Research Interests: History, Philosophy, Educational Leadership, Teacher Education, History of Education, and 13 moreHigher Education, Graduate Education, Educational Psychology, Curriculum Theory, Curriculum Development, Ancient Greek History, Curriculum and Instruction, Settler Colonial Studies, Graduate Studies, Democracy and Citizenship Education, Curriculum and Pedagogy, Classical Studies, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
In this seventh episode, Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Jennifer Tupper, Dean at the University of Alberta Faculty Education on Treaty 6. During their conversation, Dr. Tupper shares her perspectives on responding as an educational leader... more
In this seventh episode, Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Jennifer Tupper, Dean at the University of Alberta Faculty Education on Treaty 6. During their conversation, Dr. Tupper shares her perspectives on responding as an educational leader to systemic economic, educational, health crises as a community. She discusses some of the following concepts: living transitions as an educational leader, treaty ethics, education, and relations, ethical relationality, disrupting a settler imaginary, White settler historical consciousness, life writing process, family stories, teacher education, social studies education, collaborating with Elders and teachers, encountering one’s privilege as a white settler educator, citizenship education, restorying to be unsettled, and so much more.
Research Interests: History, Indigenous Studies, Educational Leadership, Teacher Education, Curriculum Design, and 14 moreHistory of Education, Educational Administration, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Autobiography, Curriculum Theory, Curriculum Development, Curriculum and Instruction, Settler Colonial Studies, Curriculum, Curriculum Theory and Development, Curriculum and Pedagogy, Public Policy, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
In this sixth episode, Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Cathryn van Kessel, also known as @DrEvilAcademic in relation to her work at the University of Alberta. During their conversation, Dr. van Kessel shares her perspectives on terror... more
In this sixth episode, Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Cathryn van Kessel, also known as @DrEvilAcademic in relation to her work at the University of Alberta. During their conversation, Dr. van Kessel shares her perspectives on terror management theory (TMT) in relation to the politics of coping with existential threat during a pandemic. She discusses some of the following concepts: love of history, living in Alberta, our mortality, encountering worldviews, fetishizing fear, genocide, assimilation, derogation, annihilation, tolerance, DJ-ing interdisciplinary studies, existential antiracist theory, ideas on evil and death, species humility, Ernest Becker, Alain Badiou, Hannah Arendt, being a weird academic, feeling gross, a caring classroom, and so much more.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, History, Psychoanalysis, Philosophy, Political Philosophy, and 15 morePeace and Conflict Studies, Climate Change, Teacher Education, Human Rights, Educational Research, Social Studies Education, Curriculum Theory, History Education, Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education, Curriculum Development, Social Studies, Curriculum and Instruction, Curriculum and Pedagogy, Seconday Education, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
In this fifth episode, Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Aparna Mishra-Tarc, an Associate Professor at York University. During their conversation, Dr. Mishra-Tarc shares her perspectives on the pedagogical figures of the “teacher” and "child"... more
In this fifth episode, Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Aparna Mishra-Tarc, an Associate Professor at York University. During their conversation, Dr. Mishra-Tarc shares her perspectives on the pedagogical figures of the “teacher” and "child" in relation to the COVID-19 Pandemic. She discusses her new book Pedagogy in the Novels of J.M. Coetzee: The Affects of Literature. She addresses some of the following concepts: pedagogy, psychical dimensions of our inner life, object-relations theory, our curricular attachments to knowledge, autobiographical writing, revolt, relational violence, reparation, thinking and being thoughtless, symbolizing unbearable feelings, affect, ethics of humility, love of literature, grief, and so much more.
Research Interests: History, Psychoanalysis, Ethics, Teacher Education, Literature, and 13 morePostcolonial Studies, Curriculum Studies, Early Childhood Education, Children's and Young Adult Literature, Autobiography, Pedagogy, Curriculum Theory, Postcolonial Literature, Curriculum Development, Curriculum and Instruction, Childhood studies, Curriculum and Pedagogy, and Curriuclum and pedagogy
In this fourth episode, Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Vidya Shah, an Assistant Professor at York University committed to equity and justice. During their conversation, Dr. Shah shares her perspectives on leadership and systemic... more
In this fourth episode, Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Vidya Shah, an Assistant Professor at York University committed to equity and justice. During their conversation, Dr. Shah shares her perspectives on leadership and systemic inequities in relation to our lived experiences with the COVID-19 Pandemic. She addresses some of the following concepts: educational leadership, settler colonialism, disproportionate racialized impacts of systemic inequities during a global crisis, the importance of collecting identity-based data, invisiblizing whiteness, intersecting impacts of racializations, access, opportunity gaps, questioning privilege, social justice, critical pedagogy, equity empires, identity-based data, Socially Engaged Buddhism, attachment, dis-identification, learning versus schooling, sustaining community partnerships and relationships, youth, curriculum and so much more.
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Indigenous Studies, Educational Leadership, Teacher Education, Curriculum Design, and 14 moreHigher Education, Postcolonial Studies, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Critical Race Theory, Curriculum Theory, Educational Equity and Justice, Learning And Teaching In Higher Education, Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education, Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis, Curriculum and Instruction, Feminism and Social Justice, Educational Leadership Styles, and Curriculum and Pedagogy
In this third episode, Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Hongyu Wang, a curriculum scholar at Oklahoma State University. In 2019, she was the recipient of the OSU-Tulsa President’s Outstanding Teaching Award. During their conversation,... more
In this third episode, Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Hongyu Wang, a curriculum scholar at Oklahoma State University. In 2019, she was the recipient of the OSU-Tulsa President’s Outstanding Teaching Award. During their conversation, Dr. Wang shares her perspectives on nonviolence education in relation to our current lived experiences. She addresses some of the following concepts: systemic inequities, neoliberal drive to compete, cross-cultural journeys in China and the United States, life history research, currere, teaching nonviolence education as a positive life force, interconnectedness, interdependence, Carl Jung’s archetypes, collective consciousness, and shadow work, psychic integration, personhood, poststructuralism, relationality, and so much more.
Research Interests: Peace and Conflict Studies, Teacher Education, Curriculum Design, Poststructuralism, Educational Research, and 14 moreCurriculum Studies, Jungian psychology, Cross-Cultural Studies, Nonviolence, Curriculum Theory, Curriculum Development, Peace Studies, Curriculum and Instruction, Poststructuralist Theory, Curriculum, Peace, Curriculum and Pedagogy, Curriuclum and pedagogy, and Nonviolence Education
In this second episode, Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Lindsay Gibson, an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia. Prior to his work in higher education, he taught secondary school history and social studies... more
In this second episode, Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Lindsay Gibson, an Assistant Professor at the University of British Columbia. Prior to his work in higher education, he taught secondary school history and social studies within the Kelowna public schooling system for twelve years. During their conversation, Lindsay shares his perspectives on what we might learn from the discipline of history education in relation to the 1918-1919 Influenza Pandemic and COVID-19. He addresses some of the following concepts: trauma, equity, historical thinking, historical consciousness, virtual reality, construction of historical representations, teaching ethical judgement, historical harms, and Twitter curation.
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Algorithmic entities, or artificial intelligences, were once the purview of science fiction, but have now become an urgent topic of a present moment uncertain of its own imminent becoming. In this conceptual paper, we discuss how a... more
Algorithmic entities, or artificial intelligences, were once the purview of science fiction, but have now become an urgent topic of a present moment uncertain of its own imminent becoming. In this conceptual paper, we discuss how a particular algorithm informs the curricula of our theorizing, teaching, and wider lives–namely, unsettling accounts of the algorithms of settler colonialism. We trace the development of this artificial intelligence from the beginnings of the nation-state we call Canada, illuminating its physical and psychical inscription on the land and settler colonial thinking. We further move through how such thinking has seeped into how we understand ourselves as humans–biologically and through practices of education–particularly through histories and lasting influences of eugenics. Returning to the material technology of AI and its futurities, we consider the implications of its future development and deployment amidst this enduring context of “rule.” We conclude with a reading of an Indigenous Futurist novel, The Marrow Thieves, as a counter-algorithmic and counter-genetic curriculum, hopefully inspiring future curricular thinking beyond logics of settler colonial futurities.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, History, Algorithms, Artificial Intelligence, English Literature, and 15 moreEducation, Indigenous Studies, Digital Humanities, Teacher Education, History Of Eugenics, History of Education, Qualitative methodology, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Curriculum Theory, Curriculum and Instruction, Settler Colonial Studies, Curriculum, Decolonial Thought, and Indigenous Futurism
Ce numéro spécial fait état de la portée des appels à l'action de la Commission de vérité et de réconciliation (CVR) du Canada dans les contextes francophones en éducation. Les contributions savantes qui s'y trouvent présentent des... more
Ce numéro spécial fait état de la portée des appels à l'action de la Commission de vérité et de réconciliation (CVR) du Canada dans les contextes francophones en éducation. Les contributions savantes qui s'y trouvent présentent des travaux de recherche émergents réalisés sur différents territoires traditionnels autochtones au Québec de même que des réflexions d'ordre théorique proposées par des chercheurs en contextes québécois, albertain et saskatchewanais. Les articles concernent les possibilités et les limites des appels à l'action de la CVR en contextes provinciaux francophones. Ils portent notamment sur les enjeux en éducation d'autochtonisation, de réconciliation, de décolonisation, d'identités ainsi qu'à ceux relatifs aux politiques éducatives et de curriculum afin de mieux comprendre et remettre en question la position particulière des communautés francophones dans le projet de colonialisme de peuplement canadien.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, History, Education, Indigenous Studies, Teacher Education, and 14 moreHigher Education, Qualitative methodology, Critical Pedagogy, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Education Policy, Curriculum Theory, Francophone Canada, Curriculum and Instruction, First Nations of Canada, Curriculum, Decolonial Thought, Curriculum and Pedagogy, and Truth and Reconciliation Commissions
In this article, the authors share their research on a curriculum for social justice, truth, and then reconciliation as put forth by the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society (Caring Society). The Caring Society is a non-profit... more
In this article, the authors share their research on a curriculum for social justice, truth, and then reconciliation as put forth by the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society (Caring Society). The Caring Society is a non-profit organization that advocates for equity and social justice for First Nations children and creates social justice educational materials for Canadian learners. The authors provide an overview of the Caring Society campaigns and educational research. More specifically, they discuss how the Caring Society is creating educational resources that center a child and youth-driven civil rights movement across the school curriculum. Such curricular and pedagogical approaches focus on truth and then reconciliation, Indigenous sovereignty, and position a social justice pedagogy. They then discuss some of the ways we might advocate relational forms of citizenship that seek to honour the truth, and then reconciliation education.
Research Interests: History, Education, Indigenous Studies, Teacher Education, History of Education, and 14 moreQualitative methodology, Social Studies Education, Curriculum Studies, Social Justice, Curriculum Theory, Civil Rights Movement, History Education, Teachers' professional development, Moral Philosophy, Reconciliation, Curriculum and Instruction, Citizenship, Youth activism, and Truth and Reconciliation Commissions
On March 7, 2017, Canadian Senator Lynn Beyak stood up in the Red Chamber and delivered a lengthy speech urging Canadians to recognise the positive aspects of the Indian Residential Schooling system that the Truth and Reconciliation... more
On March 7, 2017, Canadian Senator Lynn Beyak stood up in the Red Chamber and delivered a lengthy speech urging Canadians to recognise the positive aspects of the Indian Residential Schooling system that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had failed to acknowledge. In their positions as settler teacher educators, the authors examine how Senator Beyak's statements expose the depth of systemic settler colonialism, anti-Indigenous racisms, and unsettling beneficiary narratives here in Canada. The authors call on teacher educators to examine these systemic anti-Indigenous racisms in relation to how they can confront and disrupt settler Canadian colonialism and historical settler consciousness within teacher education and school curricula. Drawing on recent research done by educational researchers at Faculties of Education across Canada, the authors maintain that settler colonial benevolence and colonial systemic anti-Indigenous racisms can be unlearned and learned through ethical relationality, truth, and a critical praxis of reconciliation.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Education, Indigenous Studies, Educational Leadership, Teacher Education, and 13 moreHigher Education, Critical Pedagogy, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Curriculum Theory, Teachers' professional development, Curriculum Development, 'Decolonization' and the politics of settler state/Indigenous relations, Curriculum and Instruction, Settler Colonial Studies, Curriculum, Antiracist Education, and Truth and Reconciliation Commissions
Anti-Black racism continues to exist as a troubling reality for many students across all levels of Ontario schooling. These systemic and targeted racisms perpetuated and perpetrated by students, educators, and the school community, are... more
Anti-Black racism continues to exist as a troubling reality for many students across all levels of Ontario schooling. These systemic and targeted racisms perpetuated and perpetrated by students, educators, and the school community, are sometimes acknowledged but remain undisrupted. In this article, we unpack Culturally Relevant and Responsive Pedagogy (CRRP) and examine some of the ways it contributes to the ongoing resistance of anti-Black racism. We also ask how CRRP acknowledges and enacts antiracism in Ontario teacher education programs, public schools, and communities. We begin by providing an historical overview of CRRP, followed by outlining the ways it has been taken up in Ontario literature, policy, and practice. In our examination we find that CRRP can play an effective role in the work against anti-Black racisms but doing so requires understanding and engaging ‘culture’ in relational and non-tokenistic ways. We conclude that CRRP may contribute to helping educators understand the relationships to communities and the pathways where antiracism can be enacted.
Research Interests: Sociology, Teacher Education, Higher Education, Leadership, Critical Pedagogy, and 15 moreEducational Research, Curriculum Studies, Critical Race Theory, Race and Ethnicity, Culture, Multicultural Education, Curriculum Theory, Educational Equity and Justice, Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education, Culturally relevant pedagogy, Curriculum and Instruction, Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning, Curriculum, Antiracist Education, and Curriculum and Pedagogy
In recent years, reconciliation has become a central concept in renewing relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in Canada. In this chapter, we apply this concept to environmental education (EE), exploring... more
In recent years, reconciliation has become a central concept in renewing relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in Canada. In this chapter, we apply this concept to environmental education (EE), exploring principles through which EE scholars, both in Canada and internationally, can take up EE as a praxis of environmental reconciliation. In particular, we analyze the literature on ecojustice education, discussing both the possibilities and the limitations of this framework in relation to Indigenous education. We then present qualitative findings from teacher candidates (TCs) completing a voluntary practicum in an Indigenous community and discuss how the findings indicate the shortcomings of current teacher education practices in relation to EE and the need for an environmental reconciliation-oriented approach. Finally, we provide specific recommendations for EE scholars elsewhere who wish to take up EE as a praxis of environmental reconciliation.
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Today, Rohingya refugees continue to flood across the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta from Myanmar to Bangladesh. For many of them, there is no promise of return, of reprieve, of refuge, as they seek asylum from religious persecution. There... more
Today, Rohingya refugees continue to flood across the Ganges-Brahmaputra Delta from Myanmar to Bangladesh. For many of them, there is no promise of return, of reprieve, of refuge, as they seek asylum from religious persecution. There are no homes, only hospital rooms and hallways awaiting the wounded and injured. These are the news headlines on TV. In a post-truth era of poll-I-ticking, liking, loving, emoji-ing, tweeting, we are, our family, myself included, failing to witness what Solnit (2013) calls elsewhere the stories of lives faraway, nearby.
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In September 2014, pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong mobilized to bypass online government censorships, connecting through their Smartphones using the FireChat app. In 2013, four Saskatchewan women used Facebook chat to speak out... more
In September 2014, pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong mobilized to bypass online government censorships, connecting through their Smartphones using the FireChat app. In 2013, four Saskatchewan women used Facebook chat to speak out against the proposed Federal Bill-45, initiating the IdleNoMore movement. In each of these cases, digital technologies were used to bypass the “official” channels of civic engagement. In this way, digital technologies can provide spaces within which non-dominant social groups can network around – and mobilize against – the entrenched interests embedded in traditional media. At the same time, however, digital technologies can become obstacles to civic engagement. In the 2016 US election, for example, Facebook was at the centre of controversies over fake news and “digital echo chambers.” As citizenship educators, therefore how can we engage with digital technologies in a positive way, in order to create decentred spaces for civic engagement within the diversity of 21st century classrooms? In what follows, we first review existing research within the scholarly and policy contexts of civic engagement in urban schools and 21st century learning skills. We then present the conceptualization of digital citizenship that guides our project, with particular emphasis on the different spaces in which urban youth can be (and are) civically engaged. Finally, we discuss the context of our project, present some initial findings, and reflect on some of the obstacles we have encountered so far. In particular, we discuss our attempt to develop faculty/school partnership model as a way making the curriculum more locally relevant and meaningful to learners.
Research Interests: 21st Century Literacies, Educational Technology, Digital Humanities, Digital Literacy, Digital Media, and 11 moreEducational Research, Digital Media & Learning, Education for Citizenship, Citizenship Theory, Citizenship And Governance, Curriculum and Instruction, Citizenship, Curriculum, Digital Citizenship, Social Foundations of Education, and Democracy and Citizenship Education
During an election year, questions often arise about how best to engage youth in the political conversations affecting our nation and world today, and in the future. This issue of Our Schools/Our Selves provides a timely conversation... more
During an election year, questions often arise about how best to engage youth in the political conversations affecting our nation and world today, and in the future. This issue of Our Schools/Our
Selves provides a timely conversation about the emerging use of oral history education to promote youth democratic engagement within different international contexts. Moreover this collection illustrates the impacts that doing oral history can have for understanding how our relationships with the past influence our decision-making about the present. Often the historically lived experiences of students counter their nation’s grand narratives and/or add to them. As such, how might educators draw on oral history as a site of empowerment that in turn opens up spaces for students to become engaged citizens by sharing accounts of past that are still absent within the histories taught in schools? In their work and research with youth, Levstik and Barton call for history teachers to recognize that every student already comes to class with a history, with a capacity for doing history.2 Hence if citizens are already doing history, most often as oral history within their families like Brockmann in this collection illustrates, then how can we enhance their skills as researchers to situate such social histories in relation to the grand narratives that are often advocated for and/or taught through the school curriculum?
Selves provides a timely conversation about the emerging use of oral history education to promote youth democratic engagement within different international contexts. Moreover this collection illustrates the impacts that doing oral history can have for understanding how our relationships with the past influence our decision-making about the present. Often the historically lived experiences of students counter their nation’s grand narratives and/or add to them. As such, how might educators draw on oral history as a site of empowerment that in turn opens up spaces for students to become engaged citizens by sharing accounts of past that are still absent within the histories taught in schools? In their work and research with youth, Levstik and Barton call for history teachers to recognize that every student already comes to class with a history, with a capacity for doing history.2 Hence if citizens are already doing history, most often as oral history within their families like Brockmann in this collection illustrates, then how can we enhance their skills as researchers to situate such social histories in relation to the grand narratives that are often advocated for and/or taught through the school curriculum?
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Students are bombarded daily with print, visual, and digital media. Whether it is on a billboard, listening to an iPod on the way to school, or text messaging a friend during class, youth culture is hardwired into these multiple forms of... more
Students are bombarded daily with print, visual, and digital media. Whether it is on a billboard, listening to an iPod on the way to school, or text messaging a friend during class, youth culture is hardwired into these multiple forms of communication technologies. Nonetheless, the daily life and respective experiences of students are often still subordinated to the school curriculum. Our social action curriculum project, which targeted “at risk” youth at a vocational high school in the Ottawa region, attempted to disrupt this by integrating emergent digital technologies and differentiated instructional strategies into five Grade 10 courses over a span of two years. Devising what we call a “socio-culturally responsive media studies curriculum,” we addressed the following Ontario Character Development Initiatives: (1) Academic achievement; (2) Character development; (3) Citizenship development; and (4) Respect for diversity. But, what happens when social action researchers and teachers seek to institutionalize such taken-for-granted use of digital media within their design and implementation of the provincial curriculum and these character development initiatives? In response to this question, this paper will examine the curriculum we implemented with teachers and students in order to negotiate the four character development initiatives. As well, we examine how our curriculum research and the implemented program specifically created spaces for marginalized voices to be heard, and multiple literacies to flourish.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Cultural Studies, Education, Digital Humanities, Youth Studies, and 13 moreAction Research, Curriculum Design, Digital Literacy, Digital Media, Critical Pedagogy, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Media Literacy, Social Media, School effectiveness and school improvement, Curriculum and Instruction, Citizenship, and Public Policy
In 2007, Indian Residential School System (IRS) survivors won a class action settlement worth an estimated 2 billion dollars from the Canadian Government. The settlement also included the establishment a Truth and Reconciliation... more
In 2007, Indian Residential School System (IRS) survivors won a class action settlement worth an estimated 2 billion dollars from the Canadian Government. The settlement also included the establishment a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Despite the public acknowledgement, we posit that there is still a lack of opportunity and the necessary historical knowledge to address the intergenerational impacts of the IRS system in Ontario’s social studies classrooms. In this essay we therefore ask: How might we learn to reread and rewrite the individual and collective narratives that constitute Canadian
history? In response to such curriculum inquiries, we lean upon the work of Roger Simon to reread and rewrite historical narratives as shadow texts. For us, life writing as shadow
texts, as currere, enables us to revisit the past as a practice of unsettling the present, toward reimagining more hopeful future relations between Aboriginal and non‐Aboriginal
communities across the territories we now call Canada. As Simon’s life‐long scholarly commitments make clear in this essay, the onus lies with those present to teach against the
grain so that we might encounter each other’s unsettling historical traumas with compassion, knowledge, and justice.
history? In response to such curriculum inquiries, we lean upon the work of Roger Simon to reread and rewrite historical narratives as shadow texts. For us, life writing as shadow
texts, as currere, enables us to revisit the past as a practice of unsettling the present, toward reimagining more hopeful future relations between Aboriginal and non‐Aboriginal
communities across the territories we now call Canada. As Simon’s life‐long scholarly commitments make clear in this essay, the onus lies with those present to teach against the
grain so that we might encounter each other’s unsettling historical traumas with compassion, knowledge, and justice.
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We provide a response to Michiel van Eijck and Wolff-Michael Roth’s article and Michael Mueller and Deborah Tippins’ rejoinder. As we adhere to the conversation, we hope to bring new insights on the matter of Traditional Ecological... more
We provide a response to Michiel van Eijck and Wolff-Michael Roth’s article and Michael Mueller and Deborah Tippins’ rejoinder. As we adhere to the conversation, we hope to bring new insights on the matter of Traditional Ecological Knowledge and/in science education. As the title suggests, we divided the present commentary in two distinct but interconnected sections. The first section (Giuliano) deals with the limitations imposed by language in dealing with a possible amalgamation of TEK into the traditional school science curriculum and the threat that such a move would represent to the value of keeping them distinct from one another. The second section (Nicholas) touches on the unseen (or ignored?) perils of neglecting indigenous voices in the debate—which, in itself, corresponds to yet another limiting factor inherent to this forum. Also, the second section reports on a professional experience with B.Ed. students that speaks to the practical implications of the current discussion. Combined, the two sections seek to uncover the potential significance of the TEK-WMS discussion to different education actors beyond the non-aboriginal scholarly world.
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Educational researchers and policy-makers are now expected by funding agencies and their institutions to innovate the multidirectional ways in which our production of knowledge can impact the classrooms of teachers (practitioners), while... more
Educational researchers and policy-makers are now expected by funding agencies and their institutions to innovate the multidirectional ways in which our production of knowledge can impact the classrooms of teachers (practitioners), while also integrating their experiential knowledge into the landscape of our research. In this article, we draw on the curriculum implementation literature to complicate our understandings of knowledge mobilization (KMb). Policy implementation, we suggest, can be understood as one specific type of KMb. We draw on different models for KMb and curriculum implementation and develop a relational model for KMb. Utilizing our model we critically reflect on the specific successes and challenges encountered while establishing, building, and sustaining the capacity of our KMb network. Our findings suggest that faculties of education are uniquely positioned to act as secondary brokers for the implementation of policy reforms within public education systems. To this end, we discuss how a relational KMb network is a “best practice” for establishing and sustaining partnerships among policy makers, educational researchers, and public school practitioners.
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In this three-part chapter, the authors draw on their own educational experiences to exemplify how ecojustice, citizen science, and youth activism come together to be enacted in three different (but interconnected) settings: a youth... more
In this three-part chapter, the authors draw on their own educational experiences to exemplify how ecojustice, citizen science, and youth activism come together to be enacted in three different (but interconnected) settings: a youth expedition to the Arctic (Part I), a class of elementary student teachers working on a media project in collaboration with a local aboriginal community (Part II), and a lesson on the social aspects of “genetic disorders” with a class of high school biology student teachers (Part III). Adopting a broader defi nition of education (in opposition to schooling) across all sections, we seek to illustrate ways in which teachers, students, and community members can collaboratively expand the implications of science education for promoting a society that is more socio-environmentally sound.
Research Interests: Environmental Science, Health Sciences, Indigenous Studies, Social Sciences, Teacher Education, and 14 moreParticipatory Action Research, Action Research, Science Education, Curriculum Design, Higher Education, Environmental Studies, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Curriculum Theory, Environmental Sustainability, Curriculum Development, Curriculum and Instruction, First Nations of Canada, and Community engagement and service learning
To the north of the capital institution from where I now teach and write as a curriculum theorist, as a global citizen, and as a parent, flows the Kichi Sibi, where its tributaries bleed life into this earthy place, calling us forth and... more
To the north of the capital institution from where I now teach and write as a curriculum theorist, as a global citizen, and as a parent, flows the Kichi Sibi, where its tributaries bleed life into this earthy place, calling us forth and asking us to do ecological justice, right now. And here each week students and I gather within the concrete inter/disciplinary conglomerate we call the University of Ottawa, as curriculum workers teaching and learning on/within/through the colonizing abundance and emptiness of an industrious urbanized territory that has been inhabited by the Anishinabeg since time immemorial (McGregor, 2004). “Place holds the past,” Casemore (2008) whispers on migratory wings from the South, “when we lose our sense of connection to what has gone before” (p. 23). As transnational nomadic curriculum textworkers then, how might we provoke such a calling forth on this traditional indigenous territory in relation to the narrative enclosures of its ecological presence? In turn, how might we open our provocations of alter/native narrative accounts in relation to concepts like greenwashing, curriculum, and ecojustice as a praxis of living earth democracy within the institutional and inter/disciplinary places we curriculum theorists call teacher education?
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This study considers the complexities of living a cross-cultural curriculum within the multicultural contexts of Canada through following the experience of some first generation immigrants in a project that employs the multi-dimensional... more
This study considers the complexities of living a cross-cultural curriculum within the multicultural contexts of Canada through following the experience of some first generation immigrants in a project that employs the multi-dimensional space of the Internet and cyber social communities within a vocational public school in Ontario. Disrupting traditional conceptions of students’ production of literacies, the project seeks to re-work the boundaries that define multiculturalism as a series of homogeneous hyphenated spaces from which students who are racialized as non-white are expected to speak. Here we consider, “what is at play in the hyphen?” and “how might the networked classroom space be considered a hyph-e-nation?” To explore these questions, we begin with an overview of multicultural education in Canada. We then employ a reading of Third Spaces and quantum physics to reread how students might open up dual Third Spaces through self representations in a social networking space: first through the social network as a Third Space and second, as certain kinds of learners caught in the hyph-e-nated middle of Canadian multiculturalism in an Ontario classroom. The case studies are followed by a discussion that problematizes discourses of comparison between cultural communities of which students with many cultural backgrounds and experiences are members.
Research Interests: Educational Technology, Digital Humanities, Social Networking, Postcolonial Studies, Digital Media, and 9 moreQualitative methodology, Educational Research, Social Media, Multicultural Education, Immigrant youth, Critical Youth Studies, Vocation Schools, Curriculum Development and Theory, and Public Policy
Despite societal imperatives for equity—whether espoused by nation states or transnational agencies like UNESCO—current models of higher education are unequivocally failing to provide universal access. This paper seeks to explore the... more
Despite societal imperatives for equity—whether espoused by nation states or transnational agencies like UNESCO—current models of higher education are unequivocally failing to provide universal access. This paper seeks to explore the (cyber)spaces (un)occupied by higher education, specifically in the area of curriculum studies, arguing that the World Wide Web can be used to effect the democratization of education. Further, it argues for the benefits of Open Access research by means of a small-scale empirical study, the results of which indicate that making research openly accessible does not diminish the impact of research, but rather may actually increase it.
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The Canadian field of curriculum studies is gifted with the presence of several creative scholars who bring differing innovative theoretical and methodological ideas for us to listen to, reflect on, and synthesize in relation to our... more
The Canadian field of curriculum studies is gifted with the presence of several creative scholars who bring differing innovative theoretical and methodological ideas for us to listen to, reflect on, and synthesize in relation to our research methodologies and our curriculum theorizing. However, as the editors noted in Curriculum Studies at a Crossroads the tasks of Canadian scholars and respective conceptualizations of the term “curriculum” still remains many things to many people. According to the editors, such pervasive meaningfulness—that everything goes and counts as “curriculum studies”—has provoked several potential threats to the epistemological, discursive, and pragmatic fabric of our community. In this inaugural issue of Curriculum Conversations, how might we continue to study, provoke, analyze, synthesize, re-interpret, and narrate the very “idea” of Canadian curriculum studies as a counterpointed composition? In response to their concerns and to begin our conversational forum, I have attempted to structure this essay into three sections. First, drawing on Glenn Gould’s concept of counterpoint compositions, I provide some historically situated narrative snapshots that partially represent the topographical—vertical and horizontal—contexts of our field of study. Second, I examine some of the different institutional structures through which Canadian curriculum scholars are mobilizing and sharing their research. In the last section, I provide a brief synthesis of such narrative snapshots in relation to the potential future threats to our field. My hope then, is that together, this forum might provide an opportunity for us to further situate, quell, and/or provoke some of the threats that inhabit the complicated conversation we call curriculum studies here in Canada.
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The cultivation of the very “idea” of our diverse intellectual landscape requires “not only a lateral shift to the practical but also a vertical shift that leads us to a deeper understanding of the program developers'ʹ theoretic stance”... more
The cultivation of the very “idea” of our diverse intellectual landscape requires “not only a lateral shift to the practical but also a vertical shift that leads us to a deeper understanding of the program developers'ʹ theoretic stance” (Aoki, 1977, p. 51). In generous, and yet different ways, Ingrid Johnston, Madeleine Grumet, Peter Hlebowitsh, and William F. Pinar have offered their responses to the very “idea” of provoking Canadian curriculum studies as a counterpointed conversation. In this light, we might first turn our attention to Peter Hlebowitsh’s general critique of understanding and situating the field of the Canadian curriculum studies as an overly complicated, grandiose, ideological conversation that fails to translate big language, or even “big ideas,” into practical realities.
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Globally, we continue to face critical environmental, social and economic challenges such as poverty, climate change, infectious diseases, depletion of natural resources, and violations of human rights. To address some of these... more
Globally, we continue to face critical environmental, social and economic challenges such as poverty, climate change, infectious diseases, depletion of natural resources, and violations of human rights. To address some of these challenges, in 2005, UNESCO launched The United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD). In taking up this initiative, the Canadian Ministers of Education Council astutely warned educators that, “a whole generation will need to be engaged to think and act in a way that enables responsible choices....” The ten authors assembled for this peer reviewed special issue of Education Review take up this critical challenge in their research and teaching practices in an effort to mobilize knowledge focused on global citizenship education and sustainable development. The concepts underpinning much of the research presented in this collection on Developing Global Perspectives for Educators (DPGE) invite readers to reconsider the global implications of our civic responsibilities as teachers in Canada and/or elsewhere in the world.
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""This article considers the idea of a curriculum of dominance in relation to the colonial logics that have, and continue to, shape the lived experiences and knowledges of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal individuals living in Ontario,... more
""This article considers the idea of a curriculum of dominance in relation to the colonial logics that have, and continue to, shape the lived experiences and knowledges of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal individuals living in Ontario, Canada. In thinking about the present absence of certain Aboriginal narratives in relation to the ‘fort’ of Canadian history, the authors contemplate the ways in which the circumscribed logics of colonialism limit how we understand historical knowledge of Aboriginal groups not only as curriculum scholars but also as teachers and students who work in and have been educated in colonial public and Catholic schooling systems. Utilizing narrative assemblage as a research and writing methodology we partake in a dialectic wherein we confront the contours of colonial frontier logics. By braiding in our lived experiences, we seek to understand how curricular materials facilitate the silencing of certain Aboriginal narratives like residential schooling, the ways in which filmic representations can serve to re-write and redress lost memories, how one can learn from those who were subject to the violence of colonialism and how, as educators, we can address the violence and historical exclusion in our teacher education programs. Through this process, we suggest that although the continued discursive violence of colonial logics shape popular understandings of Aboriginal experiences in the Canadian nation-state, as socially justice orientated teachers we must continue to challenge the re-inscriptions of a curriculum of dominance within our future classrooms.
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Research Interests: History, Cultural Studies, Cultural Geography, Anthropology, Indigenous Studies, and 11 moreEthnography, History of Education, Critical Pedagogy, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Deconstruction, Oral history, Post-Colonialism, Life Writing (Literature), American Indian Studies, and Public Policy
This article discusses the ‘lessons learned’ from an attempt to establish an interdisciplinary education research group. The growth, development and dissolution of the group are treated as an instrumental case study. Current literature on... more
This article discusses the ‘lessons learned’ from an attempt to establish an interdisciplinary education research group. The growth, development and dissolution of the group are treated as an instrumental case study. Current literature on interdisciplinary collaboration is synthesized in order to provide a frame for analysis. Data was collected over several years and included three rounds of written participant reflections and documentation of group activities and meetings. Five major themes arose from the research, covering issues such as disciplinary diversity, common ground, interpersonal relationships, career pressures, and the need for concrete problems and tangible progress. Based on these themes, a number of ‘lessons learned’ are discussed which will likely be of great interest to those considering similar interdisciplinary initiatives.
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I would like to thank Peter Applebaum, Peter Grimmet, João Paraskeva and Maria Alfredo Moreira for inviting Rochelle Skogen and myself to share some of work as co-presidents of the Canadian Association of Curriculum Studies.... more
I would like to thank Peter Applebaum, Peter Grimmet, João Paraskeva and Maria Alfredo Moreira for inviting Rochelle Skogen and myself to share some of work as co-presidents of the Canadian Association of Curriculum Studies. Unfortunately, Rochelle was not able to attend the conference. Consequently, during the address I attempted to share the following: 1) A partial history of our field in terms of key publications and conferences; 2) Situate my involvement as a co-president and a curriculum theorist within our international field of study; 3) Provide a brief sketch some of the research and community service learning I am currently doing within the Bachelor Education program at the University of Ottawa (for more information on our different social action curriculum research projects see www.curriculumtheoryproject.ca); 4) Begin preliminary conversation on the experimental possibilities of developing curriculum as a cosmopolitan praxis. Some sections of the address have been updated and edited to represent events that have transpired since our collective gathering.
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This multi-voiced paper explores the micro-level dimensions of human learning and becoming from transcultural encounters, lessons and/or curriculum under heightened transnationalism. It posits that mainstream approaches to conceptualizing... more
This multi-voiced paper explores the micro-level dimensions of human learning and becoming from transcultural encounters, lessons and/or curriculum under heightened transnationalism. It posits that mainstream approaches to conceptualizing the ‘education’ of international education lack sufficient theorization of difference, sociality, history and learning in trans-local spaces and suggests that there are expanding networks of transcultural engagements to be examined under the umbrella of international education. To explore this reconceived pedagogical landscape of international education three specific cases are presented: an auto-ethnographic reflection on coming into and making sense of one’s international experience, a conceptual framing of internationalizing preservice education curriculum and a
qualitative analysis of the pedagogical impacts of undergraduates’ international internships. Each case illustrates the complexities, possibilities and challenges of (framing) learning and becoming in sites of transcultural engagement.
qualitative analysis of the pedagogical impacts of undergraduates’ international internships. Each case illustrates the complexities, possibilities and challenges of (framing) learning and becoming in sites of transcultural engagement.
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Digital technologies have the potential to enable history teachers to engage student learning, meet diverse learning styles, present a diversity of perspectives, and foster historical inquiry. Pre-service teachers entering today’s... more
Digital technologies have the potential to enable history teachers to engage student learning, meet diverse learning styles, present a diversity of perspectives, and foster historical inquiry. Pre-service teachers entering today’s Canadian faculties of education are surrounded by more technology than their predecessors. But are they equipped with requisite knowledge and strategies to integrate these technologies effectively into their classrooms? This exploratory study used a cross-sectional survey to investigate pre-service teachers’ experiences with digital technologies in relation to teaching history. By doing so it provides a context for further research into the pedagogical impacts of integrating digital technologies into history classrooms.
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This article considers how curriculum theorists can draw upon autobiographical writing strategies and emergent 2.0 technologies (Comic Life, Googling, etc.) to understand the aesthetic processes for surfing, screen capturing, and... more
This article considers how curriculum theorists can draw upon autobiographical writing strategies and emergent 2.0 technologies (Comic Life, Googling, etc.) to understand the aesthetic processes for surfing, screen capturing, and provoking a virtual narrative landscape. To do so, this article provokes the inter/disciplinary digital topographies of Canadian curriculum studies anew while remaining unfaithfully faithful to the concept of an old name like currere, in terms of its discursive narrative genealogies. As such, the article begins by tracing the vertical and horizontal autobiographical relationship to the vertical and horizontal digital narrative genealogy of the Provoking Curriculum Studies conference. The article then situates the tracing of such autobiographical and digital narrative snapshots to the theoretical concepts of currere and Denkbild. In turn, the article asks curriculum theorists to consider how they might frame future digital experimentations with curriculum theorizing as an aesthetic form of Denkbild, to provoke an uncommon countenance within the larger recurring narrative movements of Canadian curriculum studies.
During the late 1960s, a group of American curricularists and documentary filmmakers, notably Dwayne Huebner and Frederick Wiseman, worked to provoke the educational and political issues of their time. In turn, these public intellectuals... more
During the late 1960s, a group of American curricularists and documentary filmmakers, notably Dwayne Huebner and Frederick Wiseman, worked to provoke the educational and political issues of their time. In turn, these public intellectuals sought to disrupt, among other things, the institutional borders and everyday realities of racialized segregation, infringements against individual rights, economic exploitation and gendered inequities within the institutions of schooling. The educational questions these filmmakers and curriculum theorists posed more than four decades ago continue to speak to things that matter. Many of these curricularists, like Maxine Greene, Michael Apple, Dwayne Huebner, and William F. Pinar to name a few provoked us to question why some administrators, teachers and students (including the authors of this writing) remain couched in our own indifference and accede ourselves to the political, silent extensions of bureaucratic and technocratic discursive arms. Are younger generations of politicians, curriculum scholars, principals, teachers and students taking account of our mediated consumption of things that matter? Are we questioning the underpinning causes and multiple literacies of our current environmental crisis, the ongoing racialized, homophobic, physical, psychical, misogynistic, exploitative and epistemic violence taking place inside and outside schools? Or, are we repeating the political and curricular bandwagon songs of the past? Are Iraq and Afghanistan, once again, yet another symbolic curricular recapitulation of Vietnam? Are schools designed to lead, inform and provoke society? Or, are schools merely created to reflect contemporary society’s beliefs, obsessions, preoccupations and frailties? Further, does curriculum mirror school’s focus or does curriculum work in opposition to what schools set out to achieve? In response to such pro/vocations we attempt to bridge a complicated conversation between two historical texts hoping, in turn, to relocate and re-enter the present temporal borders of our current lives beyond.... superficial curricular sighs.
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This paper traces, often drawing on autobiographical examples, the temporal migrations of educational experiences in the language of the other. As a documented Canadian and British citizen, an immigrant with an ex-appropriated proper name... more
This paper traces, often drawing on autobiographical examples, the temporal migrations of educational experiences in the language of the other. As a documented Canadian and British citizen, an immigrant with an ex-appropriated proper name traced to Guyana’s indentured Chinese cane reapers, and thus, an imperial and postcolonial subject with certain identity disorders here in America, Canada, and elsewhere, how is a migratory subject subjected to the language of the other? More specifically, how might one learn, via currere, from a migrant subject’s educational experiences of appropriation and alienation in the language of the other?
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This book counters the cultural homogenization of global policy. It examines a fundamental question about the integrity of teacher education in particular places, serving particular communities, at particular historical moments: What... more
This book counters the cultural homogenization of global policy. It examines a fundamental question about the integrity of teacher education in particular places, serving particular communities, at particular historical moments: What curricular conditions would need to prevail for teacher education to foster teachers’ intellectual leadership, an appreciation of civic particularity and historical circumstance, and the capacity to engage ethically (pedagogically) with students’ histories and ideas?
Using lessons learned from the Canadian context, the authors identify and investigate the importance of initial and continuing professional education that fosters teachers’ intellectual freedom and study; advances an informed and critical appreciation of civic particularity and historical circumstance; and cultivates ethical (i.e., pedagogical) engagement with ideas and histories—teachers’ own and their students—as crucial themes of teacher education globally.
Using lessons learned from the Canadian context, the authors identify and investigate the importance of initial and continuing professional education that fosters teachers’ intellectual freedom and study; advances an informed and critical appreciation of civic particularity and historical circumstance; and cultivates ethical (i.e., pedagogical) engagement with ideas and histories—teachers’ own and their students—as crucial themes of teacher education globally.
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This book addresses oral history as a form of education for redress and reconciliation. It provides scholarship that troubles both the possibilities and limitations of oral history in relation to the pedagogical and curricular redress of... more
This book addresses oral history as a form of education for redress and reconciliation. It provides scholarship that troubles both the possibilities and limitations of oral history in relation to the pedagogical and curricular redress of historical harms. Contributing authors compel the reader to question what oral history calls them to do, as citizens, activists, teachers, or historians, in moving towards just relations. Highlighting the link between justice and public education through oral history, chapters explore how oral histories question pedagogical and curricular harms, and how they shed light on what is excluded or made invisible in public education.
The authors speak to oral history as a hopeful and important pedagogy for addressing difficult knowledge, exploring significant questions such as: how do community-based oral history projects affect historical memory of the public? What do we learn from oral history in government systems of justice versus in the political struggles of non-governmental organizations? What is the burden of collective remembering and how does oral history implicate people in the past? How are oral histories about difficult knowledge represented in curriculum, from digital storytelling and literature to environmental and treaty education?
This book presents oral history as as a form of education that can facilitate redress and reconciliation in the face of challenges, and bring about an awareness of historical knowledge to support action that addresses legacies of harm. Furthering the field on oral history and education, this work will appeal to academics, researchers and post-graduate students in the fields of social justice education, oral history, Indigenous education, curriculum studies, history of education, and social studies education.
The authors speak to oral history as a hopeful and important pedagogy for addressing difficult knowledge, exploring significant questions such as: how do community-based oral history projects affect historical memory of the public? What do we learn from oral history in government systems of justice versus in the political struggles of non-governmental organizations? What is the burden of collective remembering and how does oral history implicate people in the past? How are oral histories about difficult knowledge represented in curriculum, from digital storytelling and literature to environmental and treaty education?
This book presents oral history as as a form of education that can facilitate redress and reconciliation in the face of challenges, and bring about an awareness of historical knowledge to support action that addresses legacies of harm. Furthering the field on oral history and education, this work will appeal to academics, researchers and post-graduate students in the fields of social justice education, oral history, Indigenous education, curriculum studies, history of education, and social studies education.
Research Interests: History, Cultural History, Ethics, Teacher Education, History of Education, and 12 moreNarrative, Qualitative methodology, Critical Pedagogy, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Social Justice, Oral history, Life history, Restorative Justice, History Education, Reconciliation, and Curriculum and Instruction
In this collection, the authors put forth different philosophical conceptions of “hacking education” in response to the educational, societal, and technological demands of the 21st century. Teacher Educators are encouraged to draw on the... more
In this collection, the authors put forth different philosophical conceptions of “hacking education” in response to the educational, societal, and technological demands of the 21st century. Teacher Educators are encouraged to draw on the collection to rethink how “hacking education” can be understood simultaneously as a “praxis” informed by desires for malice, as well as a creative site for us to reconsider the possibilities and limitations of teaching and learning in a digital era.
How do we hack beyond the limits of circumscribed experiences, regulated subjective encounters with knowledge and the limits imposed by an ever constrained 21st century schooling system in the hopes of imagining better and more meaningful futures?
How do we foster ingenuity and learning as the end itself (and not learning as economic imperative) in a world where technology, in part, positions individuals as zombie-like and as an economic end in itself?
Can we “hack” education in such a way that helps to mitigate the black hat hacking that increasingly lays ruin to individual lives, government agencies, and places of work?
How can we, as educators, facilitate the curricular and pedagogical processes of reclaiming the term hacking so as to remember and remind ourselves that hacking’s humble roots are ultimately pedagogical in its very essence?
As a collection of theoretical and pedagogical pieces, the chapters in the collection are of value to both scholars and practitioners who share the same passion and commitment to changing, challenging and reimagining the script that all too often constrains and prescribes particular visions of education. Those who seek to question the nature of teaching and learning and who seek to develop a richer theoretical vocabulary will benefit from the insightful and rich collection of essays presented in this collection. In this regard, the collection offers something for all who might wish to rethink the fundamental dynamics of education or, as Morpheus asks of Neo in The Matrix, bend the rules of conventional ways of knowing and being.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments. Introduction—Hacking Education in the 21st Century, Bryan Smith, Nicholas Ng-A-Fook, Linda Radford, and Sarah Smitherman Pratt. An Existential Hack of Neoliberal Discourses in Education, Sean Wiebe. Hacking Minds: Curriculum Mentis, Noosphere, Internet, Matrix, Web, Yu-Ling Lee and Stephen Petrina. “If the Stars Are Spotlights, I Wanted the Sun”: Hacking Children’s Literature in Raziel Reid’s When Everything Feels Like the Movies, Linda Radford. Curricula of Identity-Subjectivity in Distributed Social Media Spaces, Paul Eaton. Hacking “The Matrix”: Teacher Ontology at the Abyss of the Žižekian Real, Brian Gilbert. Cyborg Politics: Body-Data Assemblages and the Limits of Institutional Resistance, Nichole Grant and Pamela Rogers. New Literacy Threshold Concepts as a “Life Hack”, Patricia Altass and Sean Wiebe. Hacking Structures: Educational Technology Programs, Evaluation, and Transformation, Michelle Hagerman, Leigh Wolf, and Heather Woods. Digital Learning as Aesthetic Experience: A Call for a Meaning-Full Curriculum, Mei Wu Hoyt and Milan Jilka. Hacking My Way Through Digital Discomforts as a Literacy Teacher Educator, Elisabeth Johnson. About the Authors.
How do we hack beyond the limits of circumscribed experiences, regulated subjective encounters with knowledge and the limits imposed by an ever constrained 21st century schooling system in the hopes of imagining better and more meaningful futures?
How do we foster ingenuity and learning as the end itself (and not learning as economic imperative) in a world where technology, in part, positions individuals as zombie-like and as an economic end in itself?
Can we “hack” education in such a way that helps to mitigate the black hat hacking that increasingly lays ruin to individual lives, government agencies, and places of work?
How can we, as educators, facilitate the curricular and pedagogical processes of reclaiming the term hacking so as to remember and remind ourselves that hacking’s humble roots are ultimately pedagogical in its very essence?
As a collection of theoretical and pedagogical pieces, the chapters in the collection are of value to both scholars and practitioners who share the same passion and commitment to changing, challenging and reimagining the script that all too often constrains and prescribes particular visions of education. Those who seek to question the nature of teaching and learning and who seek to develop a richer theoretical vocabulary will benefit from the insightful and rich collection of essays presented in this collection. In this regard, the collection offers something for all who might wish to rethink the fundamental dynamics of education or, as Morpheus asks of Neo in The Matrix, bend the rules of conventional ways of knowing and being.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments. Introduction—Hacking Education in the 21st Century, Bryan Smith, Nicholas Ng-A-Fook, Linda Radford, and Sarah Smitherman Pratt. An Existential Hack of Neoliberal Discourses in Education, Sean Wiebe. Hacking Minds: Curriculum Mentis, Noosphere, Internet, Matrix, Web, Yu-Ling Lee and Stephen Petrina. “If the Stars Are Spotlights, I Wanted the Sun”: Hacking Children’s Literature in Raziel Reid’s When Everything Feels Like the Movies, Linda Radford. Curricula of Identity-Subjectivity in Distributed Social Media Spaces, Paul Eaton. Hacking “The Matrix”: Teacher Ontology at the Abyss of the Žižekian Real, Brian Gilbert. Cyborg Politics: Body-Data Assemblages and the Limits of Institutional Resistance, Nichole Grant and Pamela Rogers. New Literacy Threshold Concepts as a “Life Hack”, Patricia Altass and Sean Wiebe. Hacking Structures: Educational Technology Programs, Evaluation, and Transformation, Michelle Hagerman, Leigh Wolf, and Heather Woods. Digital Learning as Aesthetic Experience: A Call for a Meaning-Full Curriculum, Mei Wu Hoyt and Milan Jilka. Hacking My Way Through Digital Discomforts as a Literacy Teacher Educator, Elisabeth Johnson. About the Authors.
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This book seeks to understand how to internationalize curriculum without imperializing or imposing the old, colonial, and so-called first-world conceptualizations of education, teaching, and learning. The collection draws on the... more
This book seeks to understand how to internationalize curriculum without imperializing or imposing the old, colonial, and so-called first-world conceptualizations of education, teaching, and learning. The collection draws on the groundbreaking work of Dwayne Huebner in order to invite scholars into conversation with histories of curriculum studies and to posit them within it, opening up new spaces to work in and through curricular issues. This book will appeal to scholars, teachers, and students looking to reconceptualize international curriculum development and theory. (The proof is not representative of final version).
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The collection provides educators, students, and researchers with a comprehensive examination of the conceptual approaches, methodological limitations, and pedagogical possibilities of oral history within formal and informal educational... more
The collection provides educators, students, and researchers with a comprehensive examination of the conceptual approaches, methodological limitations, and pedagogical possibilities of oral history within formal and informal educational settings from around the world. By assembling international scholars in the field for the first time, this collection will stimulate new debates and in turn inspire new practices for doing oral history within the contexts of public schooling, higher education, and community-based learning. Drawing upon the expertise of practitioners and academics, our hope is that the collection becomes a catalyst for the development of curricular exemplars and progressive pedagogies for our classrooms.
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This book provokes readers to imagine the different ways in which educational researchers can engage the narrative inquiry within the broader field of curriculum studies in Canada and abroad. Several chapters in the book situate and... more
This book provokes readers to imagine the different ways in which educational researchers can engage the narrative inquiry within the broader field of curriculum studies in Canada and abroad. Several chapters in the book situate and complicate narrative place-based stories. In turn, the chapters afford future readers opportunities to migrate across different geographical and interdisciplinary territories within curriculum studies in Canada (life writing methodologies, phenomenology, anti-racist education, gender, semiotic analysis, curriculum theorizing, cultural studies, indigenous studies, place, and others). The book is comprised of chapters written by established curriculum scholars as well as junior scholars and graduate students to provide a sampling of the diversity of experiences afforded to all who participate within the broader field of Canadian Curriculum Studies. Each author invokes life writing and/or intertextual analysis as a mode of inquiry to narrate and construct meaning by linking what we might call curricular events in particular ways. The authors provide provoking and innovative insights on how future Canadian curriculum scholars might advance the curricular knowledge across interdisciplinary topographies that work to disrupt, blur and complicate traditional modes of engaging with the concept of "curriculum studies."
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"The longest desegregation lawsuit in American history, involving Louisiana's political, judicial and educational institutions, was recently settled. Like many African-American communities in the south, members of the United Houma Nation... more
"The longest desegregation lawsuit in American history, involving Louisiana's political, judicial and educational institutions, was recently settled. Like many African-American communities in the south, members of the United Houma Nation did not have access to «White» systems of public education, or to African-American schools, until the mid-1960s. This book illustrates how the Louisiana state apparatus historically dictated educational exclusion through its infamous Jim Crow policies of racial segregation. Utilizing a combination of ethnography, historiography, and oral history methods, its research narratives are specifically concerned with the life histories of United Houma Nation elders who experienced firsthand the complexities and difficulties of institutional racism.
An Indigenous Curriculum of Place is essential reading for curriculum scholars, teachers, and community leaders. The narratives in this book not only have the potential to teach us about alternative ways of knowing, but also to understand the limits of our colonized worldviews."
An Indigenous Curriculum of Place is essential reading for curriculum scholars, teachers, and community leaders. The narratives in this book not only have the potential to teach us about alternative ways of knowing, but also to understand the limits of our colonized worldviews."
Research Interests: Critical Theory, History, Anthropology, Education, Indigenous Studies, and 11 moreTeacher Education, Curriculum Design, History of Education, Postcolonial Studies, Qualitative methodology, Critical Pedagogy, Curriculum Studies, Oral history, Curriculum and Instruction, Deconstructing a Curriculum Of Dominance, and United Houma Nation in Louisiana
Critical examination of research within the field of curriculum studies. Seminar in Curriculum Studies EDU 6102 is an online course designed to: 1) Synthesize different curriculum studies scholarship put forth in coursework; 2) Analyze... more
Critical examination of research within the field of curriculum studies. Seminar in Curriculum Studies EDU 6102 is an online course designed to: 1) Synthesize different curriculum studies scholarship put forth in coursework; 2) Analyze the contributions of curriculum scholars’ intellectual work and research to educational practice; and 3) Integrate a critical analysis and synthesis of the contributions and gaps of different international and national curriculum scholars’ research in relation to the field of curriculum studies.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, History, Cultural Studies, Education, Indigenous Studies, and 13 moreTeacher Education, Curriculum Design, History of Education, Higher Education, Race and Racism, Curriculum Studies, Podcasting, Pedagogy, Curriculum Theory, Curriculum Development, Curriculum and Instruction, Settler Colonial Studies, and COVID-19 PANDEMIC
EDU 6102 Curriculum Studies Seminar is about the critical examination of research within the field of curriculum studies. EDU 6102 is an online course designed to: 1) Synthesize different curriculum studies scholarship; 2) Analyze the... more
EDU 6102 Curriculum Studies Seminar is about the critical examination of research within the field of curriculum studies. EDU 6102 is an online course designed to: 1) Synthesize different curriculum studies scholarship; 2) Analyze the contributions of curriculum scholars' intellectual work and research to educational practice; and 3) Integrate a critical analysis and synthesis of the contributions and gaps of different international and national curriculum scholars' research in relation to the field of curriculum studies. Each week, you will be afforded pedagogical opportunities to apply a critical lens to the concepts put forth by different curriculum scholars. Consequently, we will read samples of their intellectual scholarship. In turn, you will have an opportunity to listen to Fooknconversation, which is a podcast that invites you to delve deeper into the lives and thinking of these different curriculum scholars and respective scholarship in relation to their lived experiences with COVID-19.
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For those who have to transfer their courses online, please feel free to use my course syllabus and structure as a potential example. At the University of Ottawa we use Brightspace to teach our online courses. The lectures for this course... more
For those who have to transfer their courses online, please feel free to use my course syllabus and structure as a potential example. At the University of Ottawa we use Brightspace to teach our online courses. The lectures for this course will take place online on virtual campus as optional weekly online lectures that students can attend via Adobe Connect. The lectures are then audio recorded and shared within 48 hours within the specific online learning module. The schedule at the end of the course syllabus is still a work in progress. The readings will be modified over the coming weeks.
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Synthesis Seminar 5199 is a final graduate studies course designed to: 1) Synthesize different theoretical knowledges put forth in coursework; 2) Analyze the contributions of theoretical knowledges to educational practice; and 3)... more
Synthesis Seminar 5199 is a final graduate studies course designed to:
1) Synthesize different theoretical knowledges put forth in coursework; 2) Analyze the contributions of theoretical knowledges to educational practice; and 3) Integrate a critical analysis and synthesis of differing contributions and gaps of differing theoretical knowledges.
By the end of the course graduate students should be able to:
1) Analyze and synthesize the possibilities and limitations of different theoretical concepts, conceptual frameworks, and/or empirical research that were addressed in prior coursework; 2) Apply a knowledge and understanding of different theoretical concepts, conceptual frameworks, and/or empirical research in relation to “education (professional) practice” across different international, national, and provincial contexts; 3) Communicate via writing an integration of different theoretical concepts in relation to one’s lived experiences, professional, and/or educational practices within different institutional and cultural settings (family, public education, graduate studies, government, health, NGOs, etc.); and 4) Develop the necessary academic writing skills to clearly communicate and represent your self-understanding in relation to your graduate studies.
1) Synthesize different theoretical knowledges put forth in coursework; 2) Analyze the contributions of theoretical knowledges to educational practice; and 3) Integrate a critical analysis and synthesis of differing contributions and gaps of differing theoretical knowledges.
By the end of the course graduate students should be able to:
1) Analyze and synthesize the possibilities and limitations of different theoretical concepts, conceptual frameworks, and/or empirical research that were addressed in prior coursework; 2) Apply a knowledge and understanding of different theoretical concepts, conceptual frameworks, and/or empirical research in relation to “education (professional) practice” across different international, national, and provincial contexts; 3) Communicate via writing an integration of different theoretical concepts in relation to one’s lived experiences, professional, and/or educational practices within different institutional and cultural settings (family, public education, graduate studies, government, health, NGOs, etc.); and 4) Develop the necessary academic writing skills to clearly communicate and represent your self-understanding in relation to your graduate studies.
Research Interests:
Overview of recurring curriculum issues in historical and contemporary perspectives; introduction to the practices of curriculum theorizing; investigation of the effects of shifting paradigms within the field of curriculum studies.
Research Interests: Curriculum Design, Academic curriculum, Curriculum Studies, Curriculum Theory, Curriculum Development, and 7 moreCurriculum and Instruction, Curriculum, Curriculum Theory and Development, Curriculum and Pedagogy, K to 12 Basic Education Curriculum, Teoria Curricular, and Nursing and Health Curriculum and Pedagogy
Curriculum Studies is an intellectually dynamic and ever changing field. For curricularists engaging the processes of situating and defining curriculum theorizing and development remains a historically situated and contested “complicated... more
Curriculum Studies is an intellectually dynamic and ever changing field. For curricularists engaging the processes of situating and defining curriculum theorizing and development remains a historically situated and contested “complicated conversation.” Each week we will try to reconceptualize and complicate our historical, present, and future understandings of the discrepancies between various disciplinary discourses, which in turn inform curriculum theorizing and development. Moreover, our weekly conversations will critically examine how such discrepancies create tensions between both internal and external stakeholders to the field of curriculum studies, and the school curriculum writ large. This course thus invites us to participate in a personal dialogue, indeed a “complicated conversation,” in which we will be asked to recursively consider alternative approaches to curriculum theorizing and development, and in turn with the conversational issues that these alternatives involve.
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This is the syllabus for Educational Perspectives. This course has been created for graduate students who do not have a back ground in teacher education or educational research.
Research Interests:
Investigation of contemporary issues in curriculum studies within an international context: analysis of curriculum reform initiatives in other countries; examination of current trends in international and transnational curriculum... more
Investigation of contemporary issues in curriculum studies within an international context: analysis of curriculum reform initiatives in other countries; examination of current trends in international and transnational curriculum movements; exploration of alternative curricular arrangements within global, national, and local contexts.
Seminar in Curriculum Studies is a graduate course designed to: 1) Investigate historical and contemporary methodological approaches for conducting educational research that takes up various curriculum concepts within the field of... more
Seminar in Curriculum Studies is a graduate course designed to: 1) Investigate historical and contemporary methodological approaches for conducting educational research that takes up various curriculum concepts within the field of Canadian curriculum studies; 2) Introduce various Canadian curriculum scholars and their different theoretical and methodological strategies for engaging educational research; and 3) Apply different theoretical frameworks to deconstruct curriculum artifacts that exist here in Canada.
Examination of the ways in which curriculum works to reproduce and/or suppress certain identities; interdisciplinary inquiries into how current curricular language is situated in relation to identity formations; deconstruction of the... more
Examination of the ways in which curriculum works to reproduce and/or suppress certain identities; interdisciplinary inquiries into how current curricular language is situated in relation to identity formations; deconstruction of the marginalization of identities across various curricular contexts.
Overview of major curriculum theorists; examination of the Ontario Curriculum and other curriculum documents; development of lessons and units based on the Ontario Curriculum; an overview of the theory, issues and strategies for... more
Overview of major curriculum theorists; examination of the Ontario Curriculum and other curriculum documents; development of lessons and units based on the Ontario Curriculum; an overview of the theory, issues and strategies for assessment of pupils. Competence in the use of technology must be demonstrated.
Despite seemingly remarkable progress on civic-political concepts in different cultural and national contexts, the co-existence of students and civilizations in the classroom remains underrepresented in critical peace education as a... more
Despite seemingly remarkable progress on civic-political concepts in different cultural and national contexts, the co-existence of students and civilizations in the classroom remains underrepresented in critical peace education as a pedagogical approach. As a result, this qualitative case study seeks to understand the curriculum-as-planned, -implemented, and -lived of four Grade 5 classrooms at a school in Morocco. In this study, I suggest that their curriculum represents some of the key concepts taken up in critical peace education. Critical peace education works toward creating spaces of empowerment for students where they can critically analyze their relations to power. I use Foucault’s conceptions of discursive regimes, power/knowledge, care of the self, genealogy, and archaeology as the foundation for a postmodernist worldview. As part of my research methodology I collected data from curriculum documents, photos of activities/events/interactions at the school and/or within the classroom, responses from Grade 5 students to questions about their lived experiences about “making peace,” and journaling about my role as a participant-observer in the Arabic-speaking classrooms. This research seeks to mobilize knowledge that focuses on current practices for designing curriculum and pedagogical strategies that are needed to develop what we might call a “critical peace curriculum.”
Research Interests:
This dissertation is a currere study of how five students and their teacher understand their mathematical learning inside a Grade 10 classroom in Quebec. More closely, this research examines how recollections of past, present, and future... more
This dissertation is a currere study of how five students and their teacher understand their mathematical learning inside a Grade 10 classroom in Quebec. More closely, this research examines how recollections of past, present, and future mathematizing are tied to one’s sense of identity. Through analysing the entries in a teacher journal and the autobiographical stories of former students, identifications with and against common tropes of what it means to be “good” at mathematics were examined. This dissertation thus asks, how do participants in mathematics teaching and learning read their experiences, and why does a study like this matter to the future of the subject or to education overall?
Using the autobiographical Curriculum Studies method of currere, a psychoanalytic stylistic analysis, and a cultural studies component whereby participants were encouraged to respond to the characters in the popular sitcom The Big Bang Theory, responses were gathered through individual interviews. Insights were derived from psychoanalytic readings of both transference and countertransference taking place in the learning space and beyond. The researcher’s and participants’ responses were understood through the ways in which the teacher’s emotional world is transferred onto the act of teaching and how, reciprocally, the teacher is addressed through feelings, phantasies, defences, and anxieties. The former students were interviewed with the stages of currere in mind in order to elicit free associative responses that lent insight to the regressive, progressive, and analytic stages. The final, synthetical, stage of currere took place to unpack my identificatory work as a researcher and teacher in the mathematics classroom.
The methodological considerations in this dissertation included outlining the significance of repetitions of language in interviewees’ responses, both individually and collectively. Participants’ responses began to indicate a complex emotional world whereby their categorization in a “lower” mathematics course in high school nevertheless did not trap their identities into common tropes of of negativity, difficulty, and anxiety. Rather, the types of language and frequency of word use signal how the emotional landscape of students’ mathematical lives is shaped by how students perceive teachers to see them as mathematical or not.
This research reveals how mathematics concepts, but more often, pedagogical dynamics, lead to complicated psychological terrain traversed by both teachers and students. I argue that using currere as a methodology readily employable with high school students helps to uncover the complex worlds of mathematical identity formation including the role of societal stereotypes. Furthermore, if educators understand their own dynamics of love and hate in relation to mathematical competence, performance, and pedagogy, they might better foster mutuality between students and teachers overall.
Using the autobiographical Curriculum Studies method of currere, a psychoanalytic stylistic analysis, and a cultural studies component whereby participants were encouraged to respond to the characters in the popular sitcom The Big Bang Theory, responses were gathered through individual interviews. Insights were derived from psychoanalytic readings of both transference and countertransference taking place in the learning space and beyond. The researcher’s and participants’ responses were understood through the ways in which the teacher’s emotional world is transferred onto the act of teaching and how, reciprocally, the teacher is addressed through feelings, phantasies, defences, and anxieties. The former students were interviewed with the stages of currere in mind in order to elicit free associative responses that lent insight to the regressive, progressive, and analytic stages. The final, synthetical, stage of currere took place to unpack my identificatory work as a researcher and teacher in the mathematics classroom.
The methodological considerations in this dissertation included outlining the significance of repetitions of language in interviewees’ responses, both individually and collectively. Participants’ responses began to indicate a complex emotional world whereby their categorization in a “lower” mathematics course in high school nevertheless did not trap their identities into common tropes of of negativity, difficulty, and anxiety. Rather, the types of language and frequency of word use signal how the emotional landscape of students’ mathematical lives is shaped by how students perceive teachers to see them as mathematical or not.
This research reveals how mathematics concepts, but more often, pedagogical dynamics, lead to complicated psychological terrain traversed by both teachers and students. I argue that using currere as a methodology readily employable with high school students helps to uncover the complex worlds of mathematical identity formation including the role of societal stereotypes. Furthermore, if educators understand their own dynamics of love and hate in relation to mathematical competence, performance, and pedagogy, they might better foster mutuality between students and teachers overall.
Research Interests: Psychoanalysis, Media and Cultural Studies, Teacher Education, Mathematics Education, Qualitative methodology, and 9 moreEducational Research, Autobiography, Curriculum Theory, Philosophy of Mathematics Education, Psychoanalysis And Literature, Curriculum and Instruction, Psychoanalytic Theory, Curriculum Theory and Development, and Curriculum and Pedagogy
This research is an analysis of Ontario teachers’ experiences with Grade 11 NDA3M Current Aboriginal Context in Canada curriculum. By deconstructing and critically analyzing the curricular and pedagogical implications, my thesis is a... more
This research is an analysis of Ontario teachers’ experiences with Grade 11 NDA3M Current Aboriginal Context in Canada curriculum. By deconstructing and critically analyzing the curricular and pedagogical implications, my thesis is a targeted response to number 63 of the Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action. As outlined by Clandinin and Connelly (2000), this research is centred in narrative research techniques. Additionally, I draw on Miller’s (1996) 3L’s: Look, Listen, and Learn approach, paired with Dion and Dion’s (2004) storytelling as a means of telling and (re)telling the story. I used one-on-one interviews with teachers and one sharing circle with teachers and elders to synthesize data from documents to capture the essence of the lived experiences. Participants revealed their experiences of what Aoki claims is curriculum-as-planned and curriculum-as-lived in this course. The results of this research were revealed responses to components of number 63 of the Calls to Action; NDA3M requires a review of curriculum expectations to align with teachers’ classroom experiences; participants discussed how their respective schools are using every opportunity to students’ capacity and awareness of Indigenous Worldviews; and professional development to support Indigenous education is in high demand.
Research Interests:
Prompted by Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action (2015), there has been widespread response throughout Canadian educational institutions to facilitate reconciliation through education. In the context of Ontario,... more
Prompted by Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action (2015), there has been widespread response throughout Canadian educational institutions to facilitate reconciliation through education. In the context of Ontario, some Faculties of Education have responded to the calls with requiring Aboriginal education for teacher candidates, to ensure all graduating teachers have knowledge of Aboriginal histories, cultures, and worldviews. Nevertheless, there is a difference between teaching about reconciliation and teaching through reconciliation. This embodiment of reconciliation as a curricular and pedagogical praxis – a praxis of reconciliation – lies at the heart of this research in initial teacher education. This study draws upon case study methodology in an Aboriginal teacher education course in Ontario and a Treaty of Waitangi teacher education workshop in New Zealand, through an investigation of the question: In what ways do Settler teacher education programs facilitate and engage a praxis of reconciliation? The findings of this thesis propose a reconceptualization of reconciliation in teacher education by identifying the ways in which reconciliation is manifested in teacher education (a possibility of reconciliation), and the ways in which reconciliation is hindered (a challenge to reconciliation). In addition to identifying the possibilities and challenges, this research study also deconstructs the safe space metaphor in favour of ethical space and ethical relationality in initial teacher education.
Research Interests: Critical Theory, History, Indigenous Studies, Teacher Education, Curriculum Design, and 12 moreQualitative methodology, Critical Pedagogy, Critical Race Theory, Indigenous Knowledge, Internationalization, Curriculum Theory, Qualitative Research, Curriculum and Instruction, Decolonization, Comparative studies, Curriculum and Pedagogy, and Truth and Reconciliation Commissions
Kathryn Galvin successfully defended her master's thesis titled Environmental Education From a Postcolonial Perspective: Analyzing the influence of UNESCO’s discourse on the Ontario elementary science curriculum. Over the past three... more
Kathryn Galvin successfully defended her master's thesis titled Environmental Education From a Postcolonial Perspective: Analyzing the influence of UNESCO’s discourse on the Ontario elementary science curriculum. Over the past three decades curriculum scholars have failed to address environmental education through joint local, national, and/or global research initiatives, leaving UNESCO as an underpinning force in legitimizing and institutionalizing environmental education globally. This critical discourse analysis examines the connection between UNESCO’s historical discourse on environmental education and the Ontario elementary science and technology curriculum. As a study grounded in curriculum theory, it leads to a nuanced understanding of the extent to which the local discourse reinscribes and/or subverts the global discourse on environmental education. The study also engages a postcolonial deconstruction of the discourse, exploring how the global and local discursive trends work to colonize or decolonize our relationship with the environment. This study reveals that what is important is not whether or not UNESCO’s dominant discourse on environmental education is reinscribed and/or subverted in the local curriculum. But, rather how both contribute to the complicated discussion on environmental education. This research was funded by an Ontario Graduate Scholarship grant.
Research Interests:
This thesis is an exploration of expressions and representations of heteronormalized gender and sexuality discourses constructed by a group of students and educators involved in a pilot program at an eastern Ontario vocational high... more
This thesis is an exploration of expressions and representations of heteronormalized gender and sexuality discourses constructed by a group of students and educators involved in a pilot program at an eastern Ontario vocational high school. These performances of stereotyped queer identities or experiences overpower and silence the performances of identities outside the norm. Moreover, by defining what queerness is through a heterosexual frame, mainstream curricula defines what is acceptable (in education), and what is perceived as unwanted deviant queerness. Within this study I will reiterate the students' and educators' responses, reactions and opinions on a range of queer issues, and through autoethnography and currere methodologies, I will analyse my past and present reactions to queerness within the classroom in order to inform pedagogical strategies that one could possibly approach issues of heteronormalization in the future.
Research Interests:
The discourse on education for Aboriginal people has long been limited to a curriculum of cultural assimilation often resulting in an erosion of self-esteem and disengagement. Consequently, this research puts forth narratives of how... more
The discourse on education for Aboriginal people has long been limited to a curriculum of cultural assimilation often resulting in an erosion of self-esteem and disengagement. Consequently, this research puts forth narratives of how fiddle programs in northern Manitoba work as a culturally responsive curriculum that in turn address such curricular erosions. As a research methodology, Metissage afforded me pedagogical opportunities to weave the various perspectives of community members, parents, instructors, and former students into an intricate story that attempts to represent some of their social, cultural and historical experiences within the north. Braiding stories of the historical and present impacts of fiddle playing reveals the generative possibilities of school fiddle programs in Canadian Indigenous communities. In addition to building intergenerational bridges, the stories put forth in this thesis demonstrate how the fiddle has become a contemporary instrument of social change for many communities across northern Manitoba
Research Interests:
This thesis examines narrative articulations in the films Bend It Like Beckham, Bhaji on the Beach, and American Chai as a complicated conversation in relation to bicultural-identity construction in the Indian diaspora. Unpacking the way... more
This thesis examines narrative articulations in the films Bend It Like Beckham, Bhaji on the Beach, and American Chai as a complicated conversation in relation to bicultural-identity construction in the Indian diaspora. Unpacking the way “desi” identities are managed in/as a quantum (third) space – one that is continuously shifting and deferred – the films exemplify how “desi” is a heterogeneous cultural “group” without a homeland from which to speak or to return. The narratives of these films are considered cultural translations that expose inter-generational culture-clashes in the spaces between Indian and Western cultures. Screenplay pedagogy was used as a methodology to (re)read analysis of the films, revealing the ways that different movies employ and reinscribe themes of the multicultural pastoral, the carnivalesque, and melodrama, respectively. This thesis concludes by opening up some of the places from which individuals enunciate their desi identities, including the possibilities for (self)reflection.
Research Interests:
Contemporary popular music is a ubiquitous social, cultural, and pedagogical force. Enabled by ever-evolving and -expanding technology, its songs and lyrics are transmitted into our most public and private spaces. For this study, I... more
Contemporary popular music is a ubiquitous social, cultural, and pedagogical force. Enabled by ever-evolving and -expanding technology, its songs and lyrics are transmitted into our most public and private spaces. For this study, I present the Billboard music charts as a functioning pedagogy and curriculum. Riffing on Richter’s denkbilder, Aoki’s curricular worlds of plan and lived experience, Giroux’s public pedagogy, and Giroux & Simon’s
theorizing on youth culture, I sound out messages and motives embedded within the hit parade pedagogy. DJing a methodology of qualitative inquiry, autoethnography, and free association, I listen closely to chart-topping songs by Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and P!nk that feature themes of marginalization, and consider the paradox presented by the juxtaposition of their popularity and subject matter. I suggest that this playlist legitimizes and perpetuates its listeners’ marginalization, running counter to its supposed intent to galvanize and inspire. Before signing off, I consider the implications for school-based educators and pedagogy in regard to engaging marginalization, particularly the notion of implementing a curriculum with which students may participate and sing along.
theorizing on youth culture, I sound out messages and motives embedded within the hit parade pedagogy. DJing a methodology of qualitative inquiry, autoethnography, and free association, I listen closely to chart-topping songs by Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, and P!nk that feature themes of marginalization, and consider the paradox presented by the juxtaposition of their popularity and subject matter. I suggest that this playlist legitimizes and perpetuates its listeners’ marginalization, running counter to its supposed intent to galvanize and inspire. Before signing off, I consider the implications for school-based educators and pedagogy in regard to engaging marginalization, particularly the notion of implementing a curriculum with which students may participate and sing along.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
In
2007,
Indian
Residential
School
System
(IRS)
survivors
won
a
class
action
settlement worth
an
estimated
2
billion
dollars
from
the
Canadian
Government.
The
settlement
also... more
In
2007,
Indian
Residential
School
System
(IRS)
survivors
won
a
class
action
settlement worth
an
estimated
2
billion
dollars
from
the
Canadian
Government.
The
settlement
also included
the
establishment
a
Truth
and
Reconciliation
Commission.
Despite
the
public acknowledgement,
we
posit
that
there
is
still
a
lack
of
opportunity
and
the
necessary historical
knowledge
to
address
the
intergenerational
impacts
of
the
IRS
system
in Ontario’s
social
studies
classrooms.
In
this
essay
we
therefore
ask:
How
might
we
learn
to reread
and
rewrite
the
individual
and
collective
narratives
that
constitute
Canadian history?
In
response
to
such
curriculum
inquiries,
we
lean
upon
the
work
of
Roger
Simon
to reread
and
rewrite
historical
narratives
as
shadow
texts.
For
us,
life
writing
as
shadow texts,
as
currere,
enables
us
to
revisit
the
past
as
a
practice
of
unsettling
the
present,
toward reimagining
more
hopeful
future
relations
between
Aboriginal
and
non‐Aboriginal communities
across
the
territories...
Research Interests: History, Sociology, Education, Indigenous or Aboriginal Studies, Teacher Education, and 13 moreHistory of Education, Narrative, Postcolonial Studies, Educational Research, Social Studies Education, Curriculum Studies, Trauma Studies, Oral history, Memory Studies, Social Studies, Curriculum and Instruction, Oral History, and Public Policy
This book provokes readers to imagine the different ways in which educational researchers can engage the narrative inquiry within the broader field of curriculum studies in Canada and abroad. Several chapters in the book situate and... more
This book provokes readers to imagine the different ways in which educational researchers can engage the narrative inquiry within the broader field of curriculum studies in Canada and abroad. Several chapters in the book situate and complicate narrative place-based stories. In turn, the chapters afford future readers opportunities to migrate across different geographical and interdisciplinary territories within curriculum studies in Canada (life writing methodologies, phenomenology, anti-racist education, gender, semiotic analysis, curriculum theorizing, cultural studies, indigenous studies, place, and others). The book is comprised of chapters written by established curriculum scholars as well as junior scholars and graduate students to provide a sampling of the diversity of experiences afforded to all who participate within the broader field of Canadian Curriculum Studies. Each author invokes life writing and/or intertextual analysis as a mode of inquiry to narrate and construct meaning by linking what we might call curricular events in particular ways. The authors provide provoking and innovative insights on how future Canadian curriculum scholars might advance the curricular knowledge across interdisciplinary topographies that work to disrupt, blur and complicate traditional modes of engaging with the concept of "curriculum studies."
Research Interests:
Anti-Black racism continues to exist as a troubling reality for many students across all levels of Ontario schooling. These systemic and targeted racisms perpetuated and perpetrated by students, educators, and the school community, are... more
Anti-Black racism continues to exist as a troubling reality for many students across all levels of Ontario schooling. These systemic and targeted racisms perpetuated and perpetrated by students, educators, and the school community, are sometimes acknowledged but remain undisrupted. In this article, we unpack Culturally Relevant and Responsive Pedagogy (CRRP) and examine some of the ways it contributes to the ongoing resistance of anti-Black racism. We also ask how CRRP acknowledges and enacts antiracism in Ontario teacher education programs, public schools, and communities. We begin by providing an historical overview of CRRP, followed by outlining the ways it has been taken up in Ontario literature, policy, and practice. In our examination we find that CRRP can play an effective role in the work against anti-Black racisms but doing so requires understanding and engaging ‘culture’ in relational and non-tokenistic ways. We conclude that CRRP may contribute to helping educators understand the relationships to communities and the pathways where antiracism can be enacted.
Research Interests: Sociology, Teacher Education, Higher Education, Leadership, Critical Pedagogy, and 15 moreEducational Research, Curriculum Studies, Critical Race Theory, Race and Ethnicity, Culture, Multicultural Education, Curriculum Theory, Educational Equity and Justice, Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education, Culturally relevant pedagogy, Curriculum and Instruction, Culturally Responsive Teaching and Learning, Curriculum, Antiracist Education, and Curriculum and Pedagogy
For those who have to transfer their courses online, please feel free to use my course syllabus and structure as a potential example. At the University of Ottawa we use Brightspace to teach our online courses. The lectures for this course... more
For those who have to transfer their courses online, please feel free to use my course syllabus and structure as a potential example. At the University of Ottawa we use Brightspace to teach our online courses. The lectures for this course will take place online on virtual campus as optional weekly online lectures that students can attend via Adobe Connect. The lectures are then audio recorded and shared within 48 hours within the specific online learning module. The schedule at the end of the course syllabus is still a work in progress. The readings will be modified over the coming weeks.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
On March 7, 2017, Canadian Senator Lynn Beyak stood up in the Red Chamber and delivered a lengthy speech urging Canadians to recognise the positive aspects of the Indian Residential Schooling system that the Truth and Reconciliation... more
On March 7, 2017, Canadian Senator Lynn Beyak stood up in the Red Chamber and delivered a lengthy speech urging Canadians to recognise the positive aspects of the Indian Residential Schooling system that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had failed to acknowledge. In their positions as settler teacher educators, the authors examine how Senator Beyak’s statements expose the depth of systemic settler colonialism, anti-Indigenous racisms, and unsettling beneficiary narratives here in Canada. The authors call on teacher educators to examine these systemic anti-Indigenous racisms in relation to how they can confront and disrupt settler Canadian colonialism and historical settler consciousness within teacher education and school curricula. Drawing on recent research done by educational researchers at Faculties of Education across Canada, the authors maintain that settler colonial benevolence and colonial systemic anti-Indigenous racisms can be unlearned and learned through ethical r...
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Sociology, Education, Indigenous Studies, Educational Leadership, and 15 moreHigher Education, Praxis, Critical Pedagogy, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Colonialism, Curriculum Theory, Racism, Curriculum Development, Curriculum and Instruction, Settler Colonial Studies, Curriculum, Critical Consciousness, Antiracist Education, and Indigenous
Photographic image of Sumac in front of a body of water, entitled Sumac Blues by Nicholas Ng-A-Fook (Nov. 23, 2020)
Research Interests:
As COVID-19 mutates and as our response to the virus evolves, this Literary Metissage documents our early reactions to the pandemics as phases or strands. Strand I, Navigating A Global Stand Still At Viral Speed, highlights our shock and... more
As COVID-19 mutates and as our response to the virus evolves, this Literary Metissage documents our early reactions to the pandemics as phases or strands. Strand I, Navigating A Global Stand Still At Viral Speed, highlights our shock and incredulity. Strand II, Mediated: Slow Going - Virtually Alone, speaks to our slow acceptance of the situation and our readiness to begin adapting to it. Strand III, Social Distancing: Reflections Toward A Way Forward, engages with a phase of deep reflection and thought about the negative and positive implications of COVID-19 on and for shaping the social conditions of the world we live in.
Research Interests:
In the spring of 2015, the city of Ottawa hosted both the closing ceremonies of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) into Canada's Indian Residential Schools and the 5th Triennial International Association for the Advancement... more
In the spring of 2015, the city of Ottawa hosted both the closing ceremonies of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) into Canada's Indian Residential Schools and the 5th Triennial International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies (IAACS) conference. In this paper, we reflect on the coincidence of these two events, by drawing on our presentations at IAACS to provide a series of reflections on the implications of the TRC's Final Report for us as settler educators and researchers. Living and working in Canada's colonial capital, what are our responsibilities to take up truth and reconciliation? How should we proceed? Addressing these curricular questions, we present four narrative snapshots that seek to understand the Ontario secondary school civics curriculum, teacher education, and the curricular and pedagogical (re)organization of postsecondary institutions in light of the educational recommendations of the TRC. We discuss the particular comple...
Research Interests: History, Sociology, Indigenous Studies, Educational Leadership, Teacher Education, and 11 moreIndigenous education, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Political Science, Colonialism, Education Policy, Curriculum Theory, Postsecondary Education, Educational Policy Studies, Transnational Curriculum Inquiry, and Teachers Professional Development
This chapter is written up as a letter to the late Dr. William E. Doll Jr. for the following collection Complexifying Curriculum Studies Reflections on the Generative and Generous Gifts of William E. Doll, Jr. It was edited by Molly Quinn.
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Media and Cultural Studies, Critical Pedagogy, Curriculum Studies, Poetry, and 15 moreMigration, Pedagogy, Torture, Curriculum Theory, Migration Studies, Contemporary Poetry, Hospitality, Medicine, Curriculum and Instruction, Curriculum, Duty, Refugee, Stalking, Persecution, and Curriculum and Pedagogy
In this chapter, we are trying to understand how settlers and First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities might live a praxis of reconciliation here in what some of us now call Canada. How might we address the civic particularities of... more
In this chapter, we are trying to understand how settlers and First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities might live a praxis of reconciliation here in what some of us now call Canada. How might we address the civic particularities of living reconciliation together? How might we live a praxis of reconciliation as a form of ethical engagement? And what does such conduct look or feel like within the contexts of Ontario teacher education? At the very least, such curricular and pedagogical work involves studying questions that concern our historical consciousness as treaty people. To do so, we need to reread the historical narratives that shape our historical consciousness and, in turn, compel us to reconstruct our (mis)understandings of past and present relations with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities.
Research Interests:
n this collection, the authors put forth different philosophical conceptions of "hacking education" in response to the educational, societal, and technological demands of the 21st century. Teacher Educators are encouraged to... more
n this collection, the authors put forth different philosophical conceptions of "hacking education" in response to the educational, societal, and technological demands of the 21st century. Teacher Educators are encouraged to draw on the collection to rethink how "hacking education" can be understood simultaneously as a "praxis" informed by desires for malice, as well as a creative site for us to reconsider the possibilities and limitations of teaching and learning in a digital era. How do we hack beyond the limits of circumscribed experiences, regulated subjective encounters with knowledge and the limits imposed by an ever constrained 21st century schooling system in the hopes of imagining better and more meaningful futures? How do we foster ingenuity and learning as the end itself (and not learning as economic imperative) in a world where technology, in part, positions individuals as zombie-like and as an economic end in itself? Can we "hack"...
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Sociology, Philosophy, Technology, Educational Technology, and 15 moreDigital Humanities, Curriculum Design, Digital Literacy, Digital Media, Praxis, Critical Pedagogy, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Media Literacy, Curriculum Theory, Curriculum and Instruction, Hacker, Curriculum, Curriculum and Pedagogy, and INGENUITY
In September 2014, pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong mobilized to bypass online government censorships, connecting through their Smartphones using the FireChat app. In 2013, four Saskatchewan women used Facebook chat to speak out... more
In September 2014, pro-democracy demonstrators in Hong Kong mobilized to bypass online government censorships, connecting through their Smartphones using the FireChat app. In 2013, four Saskatchewan women used Facebook chat to speak out against the proposed Federal Bill-45, initiating the IdleNoMore movement. In each of these cases, digital technologies were used to bypass the “official” channels of civic engagement. In this way, digital technologies can provide spaces within which non-dominant social groups can network around – and mobilize against – the entrenched interests embedded in traditional media. At the same time, however, digital technologies can become obstacles to civic engagement. In the 2016 US election, for example, Facebook was at the centre of controversies over fake news and “digital echo chambers.” As citizenship educators, therefore how can we engage with digital technologies in a positive way, in order to create decentred spaces for civic engagement within the ...
Research Interests: Sociology, Educational Technology, Digital Humanities, Digital Literacy, Digital Media, and 12 moreEducational Research, Education for Citizenship, Citizenship Theory, Citizenship And Governance, Curriculum and Instruction, Citizenship, Curriculum, Citizenship Education, Digital Citizenship, Social Foundations of Education, Democracy and Citizenship Education, and Digital Media Learning
In recent years, reconciliation has become a central concept in renewing relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in Canada. In this chapter, we apply this concept to environmental education (EE), exploring... more
In recent years, reconciliation has become a central concept in renewing relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in Canada. In this chapter, we apply this concept to environmental education (EE), exploring principles through which EE scholars, both in Canada and internationally, can take up EE as a praxis of environmental reconciliation. In particular, we analyze the literature on ecojustice education, discussing both the possibilities and the limitations of this framework in relation to Indigenous education. We then present qualitative findings from teacher candidates (TCs) completing a voluntary practicum in an Indigenous community and discuss how the findings indicate the shortcomings of current teacher education practices in relation to EE and the need for an environmental reconciliation-oriented approach. Finally, we provide specific recommendations for EE scholars elsewhere who wish to take up EE as a praxis of environmental reconciliation.
Research Interests:
This exploratory study looks at how a sample of preservice teachers and historians read visuals in the context of school history. The participants used eye tracking technology and think-aloud protocol, as they examined a series of online... more
This exploratory study looks at how a sample of preservice teachers and historians read visuals in the context of school history. The participants used eye tracking technology and think-aloud protocol, as they examined a series of online primary source photographs from a virtual exhibit. Voluntary participants (6 students and 2 professional historians) were recruited at a bilingual Ontario University in fall 2011. From this group, the authors used a purposive sampling of three participants who represented the novice-intermediate-expert spectrum and whose results displayed typicality among other participants with similar educational backgrounds.
Research Interests: History, Psychology, Literacy, Visual Studies, Indigenous Studies, and 15 moreEducational Technology, Social Sciences, Teacher Education, Curriculum Design, Eye tracking, History of Education, Mixed Methods, Curriculum Studies, Media Literacy, Social Media, History Education, Protocol Analysis, Qualitative Research Methods, Curriculum and Instruction, and Reading Process
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
During the late 1960s, a group of American curricularists and documentary filmmakers, notably Dwayne Huebner and Frederick Wiseman, worked to provoke the educational and political issues of their time. In turn, these public intellectuals... more
During the late 1960s, a group of American curricularists and documentary filmmakers, notably Dwayne Huebner and Frederick Wiseman, worked to provoke the educational and political issues of their time. In turn, these public intellectuals sought to disrupt, among other things, the institutional borders and everyday realities of racialized segregation, infringements against individual rights, economic exploitation and gendered inequities within the institutions of schooling. The educational questions these filmmakers and curriculum theorists posed more than four decades ago continue to speak to things that matter. Many of these curricularists, like Maxine Greene, Michael Apple, Dwayne Huebner, and William F. Pinar to name a few provoked us to question why some administrators, teachers and students (including the authors of this writing) remain couched in our own indifference and accede ourselves to the political, silent extensions of bureaucratic and technocratic discursive arms. Are ...
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
This multi-voiced paper explores the micro-level dimensions of human learning and becoming from transcultural encounters, lessons and/or curriculum under heightened transnationalism. It posits that mainstream approaches to conceptualizing... more
This multi-voiced paper explores the micro-level dimensions of human learning and becoming from transcultural encounters, lessons and/or curriculum under heightened transnationalism. It posits that mainstream approaches to conceptualizing the ‘education’ of international education lack sufficient theorization of difference, sociality, history and learning in trans-local spaces and suggests that there are expanding networks of transcultural engagements to be examined under the umbrella of international education. To explore this reconceived pedagogical landscape of international education three specific cases are presented: an auto-ethnographic reflection on coming into and making sense of one’s international experience, a conceptual framing of internationalizing preservice education curriculum and a qualitative analysis of the pedagogical impacts of undergraduates’ international internships. Each case illustrates the complexities, possibilities and challenges of (framing) learning a...
Research Interests: Sociology, Cultural Studies, Globalization, Teacher Education, Curriculum Design, and 14 moreInternational Studies, International Education, Pedagogy, Curriculum Theory, Comparative Education, Identity, Curriculum, Cross cultural studies, International and Comparative Education, Internationalization of curriculum studies and development, Mainstream, Canadian Education System, Internationalizing Education, and Transcultural Learning and Migration
It has been almost 3 months. Many things have happened. Onlya week and a half to go before heading back to Canada. I have been living on Barber Avenue in Penrith, Australia. There have been many ups and downs. More ups than downs. In a... more
It has been almost 3 months. Many things have happened. Onlya week and a half to go before heading back to Canada. I have been living on Barber Avenue in Penrith, Australia. There have been many ups and downs. More ups than downs. In a week, I can call myself a teacher. Yet I feel there is so much more to learn. I love this time of year in Australia. The Jacarandas are in full bloom. While several different paths are on the future horizon, I go home to uncertainty. Once again travelling will commence. I am divided by perceptions of self-worth. What type of life will I choose? I feel much closer to self-awareness, and yet so much further from the truth. The next year will be a quest for knowledge. I will live the life of a worker. No more money spent abusively … but rather only on things of necessity. I must prepare myself mentally for what is about to come.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Educational researchers and policy-makers are now expected by funding agencies and their institutions to innovate the multidirectional ways in which our production of knowledge can impact the classrooms of teachers (practitioners), while... more
Educational researchers and policy-makers are now expected by funding agencies and their institutions to innovate the multidirectional ways in which our production of knowledge can impact the classrooms of teachers (practitioners), while also integrating their experiential knowledge into the landscape of our research. In this article, we draw on the curriculum implementation literature to complicate our understandings of knowledge mobilization (KMb). Policy implementation, we suggest, can be understood as one specific type of KMb. We draw on different models for KMb and curriculum implementation and develop a relational model for KMb. Utilizing our model we critically reflect on the specific successes and challenges encountered while establishing, building, and sustaining the capacity of our KMb network. Our findings suggest that faculties of education are uniquely positioned to act as secondary brokers for the implementation of policy reforms within public education systems. To thi...
Research Interests: Teacher Education, Curriculum Design, Curriculum Studies, Political Science, Education Policy, and 9 moreCurriculum Theory, School effectiveness and school improvement, Global education, Curriculum, Experiential Learning, Knowledge Mobilization, Education Systems, Collaborative Inquiry, and Public Policy
This research project explored the nexus between historical literacies, digital literacy and m-learning as a praxis of mobilizing technopolitics. To do this, we developed a mobile application for teacher candidates to study the absence of... more
This research project explored the nexus between historical literacies, digital literacy and m-learning as a praxis of mobilizing technopolitics. To do this, we developed a mobile application for teacher candidates to study the absence of the Indian Residential School system as a complement to history textbooks and other curricular materials. Building on the findings of our SSHRC-funded digital history research project, we sought to engender a “technopolitics” as a form of critical historical literacy. Out of this work, we sought to understand how digital technologies contributed to recent calls to mobilize educational research and more specifically, while working to decolonize existing narratives of Canadian history beyond traditional modes of dissemination.
Research Interests:
Research Interests: Environmental Science, Health Sciences, Indigenous Studies, Environmental Education, Social Sciences, and 15 moreParticipatory Action Research, Action Research, Science Education, Curriculum Design, Higher Education, Environmental Studies, Curriculum Studies, Political Science, Curriculum Theory, Environmental Sustainability, Curriculum Development, Curriculum and Instruction, First Nations of Canada, Citizenship, and Community engagement and service learning
Research Interests: Educational Technology, Digital Humanities, Diversity, Postcolonial Studies, Digital Media, and 15 moreQualitative methodology, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Social Justice, Multicultural Education, Qualitative Research, Equity and Social Justice in Higher Education, Curriculum, Immigrant youth, Critical Youth Studies, Digital Story Telling, Routledge, Curriculum Development and Theory, Public Policy, and Equity Law
Students are bombarded daily with print, visual, and digital media. Whether it is on a billboard, listening to an iPod on the way to school, or text messaging a friend during class, youth culture is hardwired into these multiple forms of... more
Students are bombarded daily with print, visual, and digital media. Whether it is on a billboard, listening to an iPod on the way to school, or text messaging a friend during class, youth culture is hardwired into these multiple forms of communication technologies. Nonetheless, the daily life and respective experiences of students are often still subordinated to the school curriculum. Our social action curriculum project, which targeted “at risk” youth at a vocational high school in the Ottawa region, attempted to disrupt this by integrating emergent digital technologies and differentiated instructional strategies into five Grade 10 courses over a span of two years. Devising what we call a “socio-culturally responsive media studies curriculum,” we addressed the following Ontario Character Development Initiatives: (1) Academic achievement; (2) Character development; (3) Citizenship development; and (4) Respect for diversity. But, what happens when social action researchers and teache...
Research Interests: Critical Theory, Sociology, Cultural Studies, Education, Digital Humanities, and 14 moreYouth Studies, Action Research, Curriculum Design, Digital Literacy, Digital Media, Critical Pedagogy, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Media Literacy, Social Media, School effectiveness and school improvement, Curriculum and Instruction, Citizenship, and Public Policy
The topic of this special issue, “Making Educational Oral Histories in the 21 Century,” explores new and creative ways in which oral history has been used within different social settings. Certainly, engaging oral history within the... more
The topic of this special issue, “Making Educational Oral Histories in the 21 Century,” explores new and creative ways in which oral history has been used within different social settings. Certainly, engaging oral history within the contexts of public schooling with young people is not novel. What this special issue of Oral History Forum does demonstrate, however, are the ways in which oral historians and educators are utilizing both old and new technologies to interview audiences from far broader segments of society. Moreover, the articles put forth in this special issue provoke us to expand our imaginations with regards to the pedagogical possibilities of engaging oral history as university researchers, community organizers, educators, oral historians, public historians, teachers and students. The projects included in this special issue represent a robust discussion of the epistemological challenges and opportunities for those engaging oral history. Moreover, oral history, as this...
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Digital technologies have the potential to enable history teachers to engage student learning, meet diverse learning styles, present a diversity of perspectives, and foster historical inquiry. Pre-service teachers entering today’s... more
Digital technologies have the potential to enable history teachers to engage student learning, meet diverse learning styles, present a diversity of perspectives, and foster historical inquiry. Pre-service teachers entering today’s Canadian faculties of education are surrounded by more technology than their predecessors. But are they equipped with requisite knowledge and strategies to integrate these technologies effectively into their classrooms? This exploratory study used a cross-sectional survey to investigate pre-service teachers’ experiences with digital technologies in relation to teaching history. By doing so it provides a context for further research into the pedagogical impacts of integrating digital technologies into history classrooms.
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I would like to hold off on writing abstract until requested revisions are made and if article is accepted. But here is an overview for reviewer and editors:In what follows, I provide narrative snapshots of some historical and... more
I would like to hold off on writing abstract until requested revisions are made and if article is accepted. But here is an overview for reviewer and editors:In what follows, I provide narrative snapshots of some historical and contemporary works produced by curriculum scholars working at Canadian universities over the last decade. To readers and fellow colleagues who are associated (or not) with our larger Canadian Association of Curriculum Studies community, I apologize in advance for the many oversights, misinterpretations, and/or exclusions of your works. Like Chambers (2003), regionalism informs my understanding of the vast and rich intellectual and topographic characteristics of our field. Part of my methodological strategy for the initial research that informs this essay is to limit my references to articles published in curriculum studies journals between 2000 and 2013 by scholars who worked and/or are working at Canadian universities. From there, I selected key texts others ...
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This article considers the idea of a curriculum of dominance in relation to the colonial logics that have, and continue to, shape the lived experiences and knowledges of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal individuals living in Ontario,... more
This article considers the idea of a curriculum of dominance in relation to the colonial logics that have, and continue to, shape the lived experiences and knowledges of both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal individuals living in Ontario, Canada. In thinking about the present absence of certain Aboriginal narratives in relation to the ‘fort’ of Canadian history, the authors contemplate the ways in which the circumscribed logics of colonialism limit how we understand historical knowledge of Aboriginal groups not only as curriculum scholars but also as teachers and students who work in and have been educated in colonial public and Catholic schooling systems. Utilizing narrative assemblage as a research and writing methodology we partake in a dialectic wherein we confront the contours of colonial frontier logics. By braiding in our lived experiences, we seek to understand how curricular materials facilitate the silencing of certain Aboriginal narratives like residential schooling, the way...
Research Interests: Critical Theory, History, Sociology, Indigenous Studies, Teacher Education, and 10 morePostcolonial Studies, Critical Pedagogy, Curriculum Studies, Curriculum Theory, Curriculum, Decolonizing Methodologies, Indian Residential Schools, Transnational Curriculum Inquiry, TCI, and Truth and Reconciliation Commissions
This article discusses the ‘lessons learned’ from an attempt to establish an interdisciplinary education research group. The growth, development and dissolution of the group are treated as an instrumental case study. Current literature on... more
This article discusses the ‘lessons learned’ from an attempt to establish an interdisciplinary education research group. The growth, development and dissolution of the group are treated as an instrumental case study. Current literature on interdisciplinary collaboration is synthesized in order to provide a frame for analysis. Data was collected over several years and included three rounds of written participant reflections and documentation of group activities and meetings. Five major themes arose from the research, covering issues such as disciplinary diversity, common ground, interpersonal relationships, career pressures, and the need for concrete problems and tangible progress. Based on these themes, a number of ‘lessons learned’ are discussed which will likely be of great interest to those considering similar interdisciplinary initiatives. Cet article discute des «lecons apprises» d’une tentative visant l’etablissement d’un groupe de recherche sur l’enseignement interdisciplinai...
Research Interests: Education, Interdisciplinarity, Educational Research, Collaboration, Case Studies, and 9 moreInterdisciplinary Higher Education, Arts-sciences interdisciplinarity, Interdisciplinary Studies, Interpersonal Relationship, Interdisciplinary research (Social Sciences), Cooperation, Problem Solving, Interdisciplinary research, and Interdisciplinary research in education
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Despite societal imperatives for equity—whether espoused by nation states or transnational agencies like UNESCO—current models of higher education are unequivocally failing to provide universal access. This paper seeks to explore the... more
Despite societal imperatives for equity—whether espoused by nation states or transnational agencies like UNESCO—current models of higher education are unequivocally failing to provide universal access. This paper seeks to explore the (cyber)spaces (un)occupied by higher education, specifically in the area of curriculum studies, arguing that the World Wide Web can be used to effect the democratization of education. Further, it argues for the benefits of Open Access research by means of a small-scale empirical study, the results of which indicate that making research openly accessible does not diminish the impact of research, but rather may actually increase it. Keywords: Open Access, Open Education, curriculum studies, higher education, Web 2.0
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Until two years ago, I did not own a smartphone. Prior to adding this digital appendage, I often relied on my memory, an internal sense of direction, international calling card, and public pay phones to communicate with my family. Or, in... more
Until two years ago, I did not own a smartphone. Prior to adding this digital appendage, I often relied on my memory, an internal sense of direction, international calling card, and public pay phones to communicate with my family. Or, in a worse case scenario, and to their chagrin, I borrowed a colleague’s phone. Now I live and walk around the world plugged-in to the digital “Matrix,” whether I am trail running, at a meeting, skiing, vacuuming to The Sunday Edition, or browsing Facebook while sitting on the can. And yet, I keep telling myself: “I am not alone!” Or, as Shirley Turkle succinctly puts it, we are alone together!1
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Digital technologies have the potential to enable history teachers to engage student learning, meet diverse learning styles, present a diversity of perspectives, and foster historical inquiry. Pre-service teachers entering today’s... more
Digital technologies have the potential to enable history teachers to engage student learning, meet diverse learning styles, present a diversity of perspectives, and foster historical inquiry. Pre-service teachers entering today’s Canadian faculties of education are surrounded by more technology than their predecessors. But are they equipped with requisite knowledge and strategies to integrate these technologies effectively into their classrooms? This exploratory study used a cross-sectional survey to investigate pre-service teachers’ experiences with digital technologies in relation to teaching history. By doing so it provides a context for further research into the pedagogical impacts of integrating digital technologies into history classrooms.
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Photographic image of dark vegetation in front of a still body of water by Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook, July 1, 2020.
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Call for submissions for the Fall, 2020 Special Issue of CPI entitled "Living Stories of Migrancy: Exile, Unconditional Hospitality and Transnational Citizenships".
Nicholas Ng-A-Fook is deeply committed toward integrating various community service learning social action curriculum projects within the courses he teaches at the Faculty of Education. He is the current acting director of A Canadian... more
Nicholas Ng-A-Fook is deeply committed toward integrating various community service learning social action curriculum projects within the courses he teaches at the Faculty of Education. He is the current acting director of A Canadian Curriculum Theory Project and Developing a Global Perspective for Educators, and also an associate member of the Making History/Faire Histoire Educational Research Unit. Nicholas continues to work toward building educational partnerships on various social action curriculum development projects with international and local indigenous communities like the United Houma Nation and the Kitigan Zibi. As a curriculum theorist he has published several articles and book chapters on the various social action curriculum projects that both he and students have developed and engaged either here in Canada or abroad. In recognition of such work he received the University of Ottawa’s Community Service Learning Outstanding Achievement and the Faculty of Education New Researcher Awards.
See video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ez9f2TC2jbc
See video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ez9f2TC2jbc
Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has called on all Canadians to begin their individual and collective journey toward “truth” and “reconciliation.” This journey, notwithstanding its challenges, is one that Canadians are... more
Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission has called on all Canadians to begin their individual and collective journey toward “truth” and “reconciliation.” This journey, notwithstanding its challenges, is one that Canadians are beginning to walk. It is our hope that all Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians embrace the Truth and Reconciliation’s Calls to Action in their everyday lives. Is there a better place to begin the work of learning, sharing, changing, and transforming – individually and collectively, than in our classrooms? We think not.
The Guides have been created to speak and relate to the power of teaching and learning through one’s heart. This pedagogical approach is widely known as relational learning. This type of learning profiles opportunities for teachers and students not only to use their heads (cognition), but also, their hearts (affect). This kind of learning takes students, indeed all of us, into the heart of difficult knowledge about Canada’s settler colonial history of cultural genocide. As such, we encourage teachers to consult resources such as: Let’s Talk! Discussing Race, Racism and Other Difficult Topics with Students and the Handbook for Facilitating Difficult Conversations in the Classroom. Moreover, before using each Guide make sure to send the letter that you can find on pages 12, 13 and 14.
The lesson plans in these Guides draw on historical inquiry, critical thinking and affective pedagogies to teach students about the Indian Residential Schooling system, intergenerational trauma, and the strength and resilience of the Survivors, their families, and communities. Through each activity, students will become familiar with local Indigenous communities and the rich cultural traditions that Indigenous communities strive to preserve, despite years of settler colonial oppression. Students will also have
opportunities to learn what reconciliation means and how they can embody reconciliation principles and relationships.
In the case studies, students may move beyond simply ‘studying’r reconciliation toward standing with Indigenous Peoples. There are many different perspectives on what “reconciliation” means for different Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. To recognize such differences, the curriculum Guides do not attempt to speak on behalf of all of these differing perspectives, but rather it seeks to open an introductory window to the many conversations that need to take place. In particular, throughout the course of these lessons, students will learn about reconciliACTION, a term first coined by the Cree Nation’s Stan Wesley (2016) to qualify how reconciliation must involve actions that lead to positive change for the well being of Indigenous Peoples.
The series of lesson plans in each Guide are framed via a “case study” format. Each case study focuses on one of the following Indian Residential Schooling system within the province of Ontario: St. Anne’s in Grade 10, Cecilia Jeffrey in Grade 8, and the Mohawk Institute in Grade 6. Each case study utilizes the Project of Heart as its curricular and pedagogical framework for studying and enacting our commitment to the 94 Calls to Action put forth by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The Guides have been created to speak and relate to the power of teaching and learning through one’s heart. This pedagogical approach is widely known as relational learning. This type of learning profiles opportunities for teachers and students not only to use their heads (cognition), but also, their hearts (affect). This kind of learning takes students, indeed all of us, into the heart of difficult knowledge about Canada’s settler colonial history of cultural genocide. As such, we encourage teachers to consult resources such as: Let’s Talk! Discussing Race, Racism and Other Difficult Topics with Students and the Handbook for Facilitating Difficult Conversations in the Classroom. Moreover, before using each Guide make sure to send the letter that you can find on pages 12, 13 and 14.
The lesson plans in these Guides draw on historical inquiry, critical thinking and affective pedagogies to teach students about the Indian Residential Schooling system, intergenerational trauma, and the strength and resilience of the Survivors, their families, and communities. Through each activity, students will become familiar with local Indigenous communities and the rich cultural traditions that Indigenous communities strive to preserve, despite years of settler colonial oppression. Students will also have
opportunities to learn what reconciliation means and how they can embody reconciliation principles and relationships.
In the case studies, students may move beyond simply ‘studying’r reconciliation toward standing with Indigenous Peoples. There are many different perspectives on what “reconciliation” means for different Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. To recognize such differences, the curriculum Guides do not attempt to speak on behalf of all of these differing perspectives, but rather it seeks to open an introductory window to the many conversations that need to take place. In particular, throughout the course of these lessons, students will learn about reconciliACTION, a term first coined by the Cree Nation’s Stan Wesley (2016) to qualify how reconciliation must involve actions that lead to positive change for the well being of Indigenous Peoples.
The series of lesson plans in each Guide are framed via a “case study” format. Each case study focuses on one of the following Indian Residential Schooling system within the province of Ontario: St. Anne’s in Grade 10, Cecilia Jeffrey in Grade 8, and the Mohawk Institute in Grade 6. Each case study utilizes the Project of Heart as its curricular and pedagogical framework for studying and enacting our commitment to the 94 Calls to Action put forth by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
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As we move towards Sept. 30, many schools and universities will be talking about observing the new National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Many schools formerly observed this day as Orange Shirt Day to acknowledge the intergenerational... more
As we move towards Sept. 30, many schools and universities will be talking about observing the new National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Many schools formerly observed this day as Orange Shirt Day to acknowledge the intergenerational impacts of the residential schooling system-but Sept. 30 has now been declared a statutory holiday by the federal government in response to calls by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. When it comes to all of our institutions-and educational institutions in particular-it's critical to move far beyond a single day of remembrance.
Research Interests: History, Indigenous Studies, Teacher Education, History of Education, Higher Education, and 15 moreLeadership, Educational Research, Curriculum Studies, Political Science, Education History, Critical Race Theory, Social Justice, Oral history, Transformational Leadership, Curriculum Theory, Teachers' professional development, Curriculum and Instruction, Settler Colonial Studies, Antiracist Education, and Truth and Reconciliation Commissions
Today, although the mainstream understanding of ‘race’ among scientists and science educators is a social construct, studies in major research journals continue to claim race as a valid biological category of human difference. By some... more
Today, although the mainstream understanding of ‘race’ among scientists and science educators is a social construct, studies in major research journals continue to claim race as a valid biological category of human difference. By some measures, the use of race as a biological category has increased in the so-called postgenomic age. Genomics, and in turn science education, are thus caught up in a paradox: ostensibly understanding race to be a poor proxy for human difference while still teaching it as a biological variable. And yet, opportunities for teachers and students to (un)learn the social, cultural and historical dimensions and contexts of genomics remain limited. Worse, typical teaching of science education curricula may foster problematic beliefs in certain racialized biological reductionism and/or its respective essentialisms. Meanwhile, teacher education, as a profession and body of knowledge, is charged with deepening our understanding in relation to such curricular and pedagogical paradoxes. In response, our scoping review sought to address the following questions:
1) What research exists within the broader field of genomics education in relation to addressing racisms, diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racisms?
2) If such research exists, what are the promising practices for teacher educators and/or science educators?
3) Is such research on genomics in relation to anti-racist education taken up within the broader field of educational research and more specifically teacher education research?
4) How might existing research on anti-racist education support the translation of such curricular and pedagogical opportunities and/or gaps for current practicing science teachers and/or future teacher candidates?
1) What research exists within the broader field of genomics education in relation to addressing racisms, diversity, equity, inclusion and anti-racisms?
2) If such research exists, what are the promising practices for teacher educators and/or science educators?
3) Is such research on genomics in relation to anti-racist education taken up within the broader field of educational research and more specifically teacher education research?
4) How might existing research on anti-racist education support the translation of such curricular and pedagogical opportunities and/or gaps for current practicing science teachers and/or future teacher candidates?
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Health Sciences, Media Studies, Educational Technology, Social Sciences, and 14 moreTeacher Education, Science Education, Curriculum Design, Higher Education, Popular Culture, Genomics, Curriculum Studies, History of Science, Biotechnology, Curriculum Theory, Medicine, Antiracist Education, K to 12 Basic Education Curriculum, and Science Education and Literacy
To begin remedying this dearth of knowledge and resources, our project is studying the impacts of the reconciliation-based education campaigns run by the Caring Society on elementary educators and students. Moreover, we wish to support... more
To begin remedying this dearth of knowledge and resources, our project is studying the impacts of the reconciliation-based education campaigns run by the Caring Society on elementary educators and students. Moreover, we wish to support learning that will encourage actions that lead to social justice. The Caring Society is at the forefront of actively engaging educators and children in reconciliation to ensure equity for First Nations children (Caring Society, 2016b; Alaca, Anglin & Thomas, 2015). The Caring Society’s campaigns focus on social justice reconciliation education that leads to actions to end inequities and discrimination towards First Nations children in child welfare, education, and access to services.