Fookn Conversation - Talking About “Academicky” Stuff: Recent Episodes
Nicholas Ng-A-Fook
How are we talking about the “academicky” stuff that informs our lived experiences? In response to such questions, Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook invites you to delve deeper into the lives and thinking of different public intellectuals, writers, artists, community activists, politicians, school administrators, and teachers.
In Episode 72, Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook hosts Dr. James Miles and Dr. Matthew Keynes to discuss their new co-authored book, Education and Historical Justice: Redress, Reparations, and Reconciliation in the Classroom. Drawing on comparative case studies from Canada, Australia, Northern Ireland, and South Africa, their scholarship examines how education systems, teachers, and students are increasingly being called upon to respond to histories of harm, violence, colonialism, and injustice within what they describe as an emerging “age of apology.” Our conversation explores difficult histories, truth and reconciliation, historical consciousness, collective responsibility, and the tensions surrounding historical justice education in liberal democratic settler states. Dr. Miles and Dr. Keynes reflect on their respective journeys through history education research in Canada and Australia, their collaborative writing process during the COVID-19 pandemic, and the challenges of thinking beyond simplified narratives of guilt, empathy, and reconciliation. We also discuss contemporary struggles over curriculum politics, residential school denialism, public memory, redress, reparations, transitional justice, and the possibilities and limitations of history education in confronting misinformation, settler colonial violence, and democratic uncertainty.
In Episode 71, Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook hosts Dr. Carla Peck, Professor of Social Studies Education at the University of Alberta and Director of Thinking Historically for Canada’s Future, a national SSHRC-funded partnership focused on reimagining K–12 history education across Canada. Dr. Peck’s research explores how teachers and students understand history and democracy, with particular attention to how young people’s identities shape their historical consciousness, civic engagement, and sense of belonging within democratic life. Her scholarship asks what it means for students to see themselves in history and why such questions matter within increasingly polarized social and political contexts. Dr. Peck has authored and co-authored numerous articles and book chapters, and co-edited influential collections on difficult histories, global citizenship, and historical consciousness. Her most recent book, Rescuing Reason, co-written with Dr. Alan Sears, argues for the urgent role history education can play in sustaining democracy in Canada and beyond. Our conversation explores curriculum policy politics, historical thinking, civic empathy, public advocacy, and actions public intellectuals can take up toward confronting misinformation, polarization, and democratic decline.
In Episode 70 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook hosts Dr. Aaron Teo is a Singaporean Chinese first generation migrant settler living on unceded Jagera and Turrbal lands. He currently works as a sociologist of education at the University of Southern Queensland. Our conversation centers on his research into the racialized and gendered subjectivities of migrant teachers and students from Asia within the Australian context, and the enduring legacies of White Australia in contemporary schooling and teacher education. Dr. Teo reflects on his journey from international student to secondary teacher and middle leader in Queensland, and ultimately to doctoral studies shaped by autoethnography and duoethnography. He speaks candidly about navigating predominantly white educational spaces, teaching critical race theory in teacher education programs, and making academic writing accessible without losing theoretical depth. We discuss the rise of anti-Asian racism during COVID-19, his involvement with the Australian Human Rights Commission’s national study on university racism, and his community engagement with the Asian Australian Alliance. Aaron highlights the politics of perpetual foreignness, Asia illiteracy, and the conditional inclusion of racialized communities in settler colonial nation-states. Throughout, he calls for critical pedagogies that move beyond symbolic inclusion toward structural change, consciousness-raising, and collective responsibility in confronting racialization within and beyond the classroom.
In Episode 69 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook hosts Dr. Leyton Schnellert, an Associate Professor, at the University of British Columbia and Co-Director of the Canadian Institute for Inclusion and Citizenship. Our conversation examines his decades of community-engaged research with rural communities and self-advocates across British Columbia. We discuss Growing Innovation in Rural Sites of Learningand how rural educators are resisting deficit narratives by cultivating rural cultural wealth, community-based inquiry, and place-conscious pedagogies in the face of teacher shortages and the persistent urban pull. Dr. Leyton Schnellert also reflects on participatory disability theatre projects, such as but not limited to The Right to Love and Be Loved, where self-advocates with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) claim space and voice their terms for doing theatre and social justice research. We talk about ethical relationality and decolonization in education change networks, learning alongside and from Indigenous community partners, Knowledge Keepers, and the land itself. Throughout the conversation, we return to themes of unlearning, liminality, consent, and uncertainty. We take up how meaningful change rarely follows a script. Dr. Leyton Schnellert shares stories of driving rural mountain roads, visiting smaller school communities, and (un)learning from students and self-advocates whose interruptions invite us to do education and research differently. Finally, he calls on us to consider what it means to do the beautiful, unfinished work of making education a more inclusive place for all.
In Episode 68 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook hosts Dr. Laura Madokoro, a mixed-generation settler historian from Quebec’s Eastern Townships and a leading scholar of migration, refuge, and humanitarianism. Now an Associate Professor at Carleton University, she draws on the intersecting confluences of an archivist, journalist, and historian to illustrate how stories surface held, and circulated within and by “humanitarian” settler colonial nation-states. Her first book, Elusive Refuge, reshaped understandings of the racialized politics of refugee admission, while her new book, Sanctuary in Pieces, examines two centuries of sanctuary, (re)fugitivity, and urban displacement. She also leads The Disaster Lab and Sites of Sanctuary, advancing work on diasporic disaster citizenship. Our conversation traced her early pathways through museums, archives, and journalism, and how these experiences cultivated a deep curiosity about whose stories get recorded, whose are silenced, and how one sentence can redirect an entire research trajectory. We discussed her long-standing interest in humanitarianism and the tensions between state rhetoric and the everyday labour of different historical and contemporary actors in a democratic commonwealth society. Dr. Madokoro reflected on the ethics of working with archives, the risks and responsibilities of making stories public, and the importance of respecting silence and refusal. She shares about the evolving practice of sanctuary, the challenges of visibility in volatile political climates, and how the body itself can serve as archive in understanding displacement. Throughout our conversation, she emphasized transparency, care, and humility in relation to the discipline of history. We closed our conversation by reflecting on writing during the pandemic and the importance of holding space for complexity, community agency, and our ethical responsibilities in relation to doing history as a beautiful, beautiful craft.
In Episode 67 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Marie Battiste is a citizen of the Mi’kmaq Nation, a member of the Potlotek First Nation and the Aroostook Band of Micmacs in Maine. She is Professor Emerita at the University of Saskatchewan and one of the most influential scholars of Indigenous education in Canada. Her groundbreaking scholarship has advanced the work of decolonizing education, cognitive justice, and protecting Indigenous knowledges, shaping curriculum studies and educational policy across the country. Dr. Battiste has authored several books such as but not limited to Decolonizing Education: Nourishing the Learning Spirit, co-authored Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage: A Global Challenge and Protecting Indigenous Knowledge and Heritage: A Canadian Obligation with Dr. James (Sakej) Henderson, and edited several collections including Living Treaties and Visioning Mi’kmaw Humanities. Over her career, she has published more than 80 essays and reports, and her contributions have been recognized with six honorary degrees, election as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, and numerous national and community distinctions. We discussed the following: The central role that her Mi’kma’ki/Unama’ki homeland has made in relation to scholarship, the intergenerational impact of settler colonial government policies of forced displacement and residential schooling on families and community life, graduate studies, career and family transitions, language revitalization through Mi’kmaw literacy and curriculum-making, cognitive imperialism, cognitive justice, restoration of Indigenous knowledge systems, influence of the American Indian and Civil Rights Movements, treaty education, and how trans-systemic approaches to law, knowledge creation, and education remain foundational to constitutional reconciliation, and advocates for rethinking university reward systems toward valuing Indigenous knowledge outside Eurocentric peer-review metrics and stresses our ethical responsibilities to protect land, water, air, each other, and more-than-human-kin.
Dr. Philip S. S. Howard is an Associate Professor in the Department of Integrated Studies in Education at McGill University’s Faculty of Education, where he explores the social formations, pedagogical processes, and epistemological frameworks that shape how we understand ourselves, form identities, and exercise agency in the context of antiblackness, colonialism, and racial injustice. Dr. Howard’s recent projects include an examination of contemporary Canadian blackface as a post-racialist phenomenon; narratives of Black life, agency, and resistance in educational contexts across Toronto, Halifax, and Montreal; and broader questions of Black Studies and its presence in Canada. We discussed the following: ISATT Conference at Glasgow University, British Empire and transatlantic slave trade, historical injustices and public memory, cosmetic versus substantive transformational change, post-2020 anti-Black racisms, post-racialist rhetoric, blackface in Canadian universities, cyclical backlash, Black Life, freedom movements, settler colonialism and higher education, Sylvia Wynter’s rethinking of the human in response to settler colonial logics, possibilities and limitations of institutionalizing Black Studies, critique of “Black excellence” discourse, historical consciousness and the archive, epistemologies of ignorance, and so much more.
In Episode 65 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. James P. Burns an Associate Professor of Curriculum Studies at the University of New Mexico. Prior to joining the faculty at UNM, Dr. James P. Burns was an Associate Professor in the School of Education and Human Development at Florida International University and an Assistant Professor at South Dakota State University. His research interests include curriculum theory, Foucauldian studies, violence, ethics of non-violence, fascism, education policy, and masculinities studies. We discussed the following: Whose knowledge is of most worth, his reflections on Israel, Gaza, epistemicide, truth, and the banality of evil, history, myth of the frontier, manhood, crisis of masculinity, industrial military complex, historicity of American violence, popular culture, attacks on higher education, his forthcoming book Myth, Manhood and Curriculum Towards Truth, Self-Cultivation, and Reparation, and so much more.
In Episode 64 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Claudia Eppert a Professor of Secondary Education at the University of Alberta. Her research focuses on the ethics of witnessing social and ecological suffering and trauma through literary, aesthetic, and mindful, contemplative, holistic engagements, along with exploration of the possibilities of psycho-social transformation to a more just, compassionate, and regenerative world. We discussed the following: her educative lived experiences, teaching, graduate studies, literary studies and engagement, cross-cultural philosophical studies, memory work, life writing research, historical witnessing, shadow texts and questions, mindfulness, Buddhism, non-dualism and basic goodness, ecological witnessing, species extinction, and so much more.
In Episode 63 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Mark Priestley and Dr. Stavroula Philippou. Dr. Priestley is a Professor of Education at the University of Stirling. His research focuses in part on the processes of curriculum making across the different layers of education systems. He is also the Director of the Stirling Centre for Research into Curriculum Making. Dr. Stavroula Philippou is an Associate Professor in Curriculum and Teaching within the Department of Education at the University of Cyprus. Both represent their respective countries as national Representatives of the International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies (IAACS). Both are Co-convenors who support Dr. Majella Dempsey the Lead Convenor of Network 3-Curriculum of the European Educational Research Association (EERA). We discussed the following: educational and political differences in Canada, United Kingdom, Scotland, Cyprus, European Union and Middle East, their co-edited collection Curriculum Making in Europe, Supra, Macro, Meso, Micro, and Nano contexts of curriculum making as a social practice, collaborating on research with teachers as curriculum makers, navigating European Union Research Grants, their tenure as editors of the Curriculum Journal, implications of artificial intelligence for curriculum making, and so much more.
In Episode 62 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Laura Forsythe a Michif Assistant Professor at the University of Winnipeg in the Faculty of Education. She is the elected Bison Local Chairperson of the Manitoba Métis Federation, the official democratic and self-governing political representation of the Red River Métis. Her kinship ties include the Huppe, Ward, Berard, Morin, Lavallee, and Cyr lines. Her ancestors worked for the Northwest and Hudson’s Bay Companies, fought in the Victory of Frog Plain, and owned Lot 31, the site of a contemporary Métis space called Pakan Town. Her research focuses on Métis-specific contributions to the academy, Métis inclusion efforts, Métis research methodologies, and educational sovereignty. We discussed the following: Our academic leaves, her journey toward becoming a Métis scholar, responding to the historical erasure of Métis women from the academy, sharing Métis scholarship Around the Kitchen Table, honouring the intergenerational contributions and advocacy of Métis grandmothers and aunties, Pawaatamihk: Journal of Métis Thinkers, Mawachihitotaak (Let’s Get Together) a national Métis network, creation of Métis spaces, and so much more.
In Episode 61 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Garry Gottfriedson and Dr. Victoria Handford. Strongly rooted in his Secwépemc cultural teachings Dr. Garry Gottfriedson holds a Master of Arts Education degree from Simon Fraser University and Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the Naropa Institute in Colorado. He has published numerous books of poetry. He has also been awarded two honorary doctorates from the University of Northern British Columbia and Thompson Rivers University. Dr. Victoria (Tory) Handford holds a doctorate in Education Leadership from OISE at the University of Toronto. She is a professor in the Faculty of Education and Social Work at Thompson Rivers University. She has co-edited and written several books that address the experiences of faculty in Canadian Universities. We discussed the following: The regional differences of the places we call home, importance of intergenerational relations to land and language, being a Secwépemc cultural advisor, leading professional (un)learning conversations on Truths before Reconcilia(c)tion, collaborations on teaching and writing, disrupting traditional forms of academic writing, poetry, short stories, children’s stories, Dangling in the Glimmer of Hope: Academic Action on Truth and Reconciliation, their hopes, and so much more.
In Episode 60 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Joel Westheimer a Professor of Democracy and Education at the University of Ottawa, musician, and the education columnist for CBC Radio’s Ottawa Morning Show. He is the author of What Kind of Citizen? Educating Our Children for the Common Good. We discussed the following: family, what brought him to the teaching profession, election campaign and day in United States, the Presidential Inauguration, political and economic mobilization of young men via social media, censorship, freedom of speech, backlash against universities, academic freedom, facilitating debates and pluriverse perspectives in the classroom, his new book, examples and differences between and among responsible, participatory, and/or social justice-orientated forms of citizenship, role of schools and teachers teaching for Democracy, authoritarianism in the gilded age of tech plutocracy, and so much more.
In Episode 59 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Andrea Sterzuk a Professor of Education at the University of Regina which is part of Treaty 4 and resides on the traditional territories of the nēhiyawak, Anihšināpēk, Dakota, Lakota, and Nakoda Peoples, and homeland of the Michif/Métis Nation. She is a former French immersion and Core French teacher with classroom teaching experience in Saskatchewan and in the Northwest Territories. Dr. Andrea Sterzuk grew up in rural Saskatchewan. When she was a child, most adults in her town were white settlers, bilingual and either immigrants themselves or children of immigrants. Most of her generation spoke only English. Her early educational exposure to multilingualism, family language shift and the effects of language-in-education policy continue to influence her present-day research interests and teaching in language education, particularly as it relates to settler colonialism. As an adult, teacher educator, and educational researcher she has worked at learning French, Spanish, Cree and Ukrainian as additional languages.We discussed the following: some of her life history and educational journey, her use of story in research, teaching, and writing, philosophical dispositions toward learning Indigenous languages, community collaborations, Indigenous language revitalization research, programming, ethical relations, and so much more.
In Episode 58 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Lisa Korteweg and Tesa Fiddler. They work as educational researchers, teacher educators, colleagues, and friends in Thunder Bay, on the traditional territory of the Fort Williams First Nations-Anemki Wajiw (signatory to the 1850 Robinson-Superior treaty). Tesa Fiddler is Anishinaabekwe from Kitchinuhmaykoosib Inninuwug and Onigaming First Nation in Northwestern Ontario. Tesa Fiddler is currently on secondment as an Education Officer for the Ontario Ministry of Education from her role as the Coordinator of Indigenous Education for Thunder Bay Catholic DSB. Dr. Lisa Korteweg is an associate professor at Lakehead University. Her community-based work focuses on questions of how schools grapple and teachers engage with the socially unjust realities of Indigenous youth who daily contend with anti-Indigenous racism and colonial inequities in education. We discussed the following: The confluences of their different life histories, negotiating, resisting, and challenging settler colonialism, Treaty education, citizens, and relations, brave conversations, professional development and their research projects that seek to cultivate settler educator accountability to the TRC’s Calls to Action, our roles and responsibilities, and so much more.
In Episode 57 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Margaret Macintyre Latta, Dr. Bill Cohen, Terry Beaudry, & Dr. Jody Dlouhy-Nelson. They work at UBC Okanagan and co-lead a SSHRC Partnership grant titled Co-Curricular-Making: Honoring Indigenous Connections to Land, Culture and the Relational Self. We discussed the following: importance of storying the wisdom that sits in the places we live, unlearning and learning with Syilx Okanagan Elders, Knowledge Keepers, Residential School Survivors, community members, teachers, and students, food, water, land, mental health and wellness securities, (Re)Syilx(izing) educational knowledge, curriculum and pedagogies, co-creating knowledge, climate change, travels across Turtle Island along its rivers and tributaries, story of the Residential School Monster, human reconciliation with the more-than human-world, captikʷł story and knowledge system, impacts of experiencing openness, vulnerability, listening, and ceremony as professional (un)learning, troubling settler colonial systems of public schooling, what each has learned with, from, and alongside others through co-curriculum-making during the SSHRC Partnership Project, and so much more.
Fooknconversation talking about “Academicky” Stuff Description for Episode 56 (Dr. Melanie Janzen): In Episode 56 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Melanie Janzen a Professor in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning at the University of Manitoba. Her research uses critical perspectives to explore the inter-related workings of power and discourses, particularly as they relate to the experiences of teachers and the marginalization of children. Dr. Melanie Janzen was a classroom teacher for 15 years. She is life-long Winnipegger, living and working on Treaty One Territory. We discussed the following: National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, historical contexts of Winnipeg, impacts of electing Wab Kinew, Nahanni Fontaine, Bernadette Smith, and the teachings and scholarship of Niigaan Sinclair, the current political contexts of Manitoba, the Canadian Human Rights Museum, educational stigmatization of children in care, impacts of neoliberal educational policies, learnification, the challenge of ethical obligations when caring for and teaching children and youth, solidarities in protesting Bill 64, restorying teachers’ stories, and so much more.
In Episode 55 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Heather Stone an Associate Professor who holds the Nalley E.P./LEQSF Endowed Professorship in the College of Education and Human Development at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. She has over fifteen years of experience in education and has developed curricula for K-12, college, and community projects. The curriculum is derived from the oral histories she collects with and alongside different coastal communities who are losing their land due to climate change. We discussed the following: oral history methodologies, the lived experiences of rural communities during the desegregation of K-12 public schooling system, developing a global perspective with teacher candidates, collaborative interdisciplinary projects, bringing community oral history education via virtual reality to the K-12 science classroom, her documentary film Isle of Memories, and so much more.
In Episode 54 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Krista McCracken an award winning public historian and archivist. They work as a Researcher/Curator at Algoma University’s Arthur A. Wishart Library and Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre, in Baawating (Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario) on the Robinson-Huron Treaty territory, the traditional territories of the Anishnaabeg, specifically the Garden River and Batchewana First Nations. Krista’s research and podcast focus on community archives, residential schooling system, access, and outreach. We discussed the following: history of the residential and day schooling systems, the creation and evolution of the Shingwauk Residential School, decolonial archival futures, educational programs and services provided at and through the Centre, role of the Children of Shingwauk Alumni Association, the original Shingwauk Project of 1979 and the visionary impact of 1981 Shingwauk Reunion, the award winning exhibitions, and so much more.
Fooknconversation talking about “Academicky” Stuff Description for Episode 53 (Dr. Maria Luiza Süssekind): In Episode 53 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Maria Luiza Süssekind a Professor, mother and grandmother, feminist and activist, and writer from the Global South. She currently does research and teaches at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro State. She is a member of the council for Human Rights policies of the Ministry of Education. We discussed the following: lived experiences as a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia and University of Ottawa, studying autobiographical research, International Association for the Advancement of Curriculum Studies, navigating and negotiating her undergraduate and graduate studies in Brazil, Deleuze and Guattari, Michel de Certeau, Marx, poststructuralism, plurilingualism, emergence and impact of Brazilian everyday life studies, nets of knowledge, epistemicide, settler colonialism, her documentary Keep Me Away from this Father, and so much 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 decolonising 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.
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.
In Episode 50 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviewsStephen Hurleythe Founder and Chief Catalyst at voicEd Radio. Combining a life-long love of radio and an intense 30-year career in public education, Stephen Hurley 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, creating conversations among podcasters, researchers, and teachers, life transitions, theology, philosophy, his relationship with music, being a life-long learner, and so much 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 rankings, community wealth, Black leadership, a social justice praxis, and so much more.
Fooknconversation talking about “Academicky” Stuff Description for Episode 48 (Dr. Janice Forsyth): In Episode 47 Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. 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.
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, interconnections between? 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In Episode 42 Dr. 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.
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.
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.
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, counterstories, 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.
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.
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.
In Episode 36 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Patricia Liu Baergen an Assistant Professor at Thompson Rivers University. Dr. Patricia Liu Baergen draws on her research in the areas of educational philosophy, curriculum studies, and life history to share her insights on intellectual works of Dr. Ted Tetsuo Aoki. We discussed some of the following issues: negotiating the 4th wave of the Pandemic, impact of the flooding in British Columbia, teaching, her recent book Tracing Ted Tetsuo Aoki’s Intellectual Formation, phenomenology, temporal movements of Dasein, internal and external biographical situatedness, isness of “curriculum-as-lived,” limits of instrumentalism, bridging a bridge that is not a bridge, and so much more.
In Episode 35 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews 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 outer suburbs and implications, agency, and so much 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.
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.
In Episode 31 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In Episode 25 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Cristyne Hébert, an assistant professor in Assessment and Evaluation at the University of Regina. Dr. Cristyne Hébert 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.
In Episode 24 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Catherine Duquette, an Associated 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.
Lors de l’émission no. 23, le professeur Nicholas Ng-A-Fook discute avec Sara Schroeter, 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 de la race, l’art dramatique et le théâtre de l’opprimé pour partager ses expériences comme chercheuse dans les écoles de langue française en milieux minoritaires. Nous abordons l’actualité et les 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, de la prononciation, de l’intonation, et encore plus.
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.
In Episode 21 Dr. Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Amélie Lemieux is an Assistant Professor at Mount St. Vincent University. During their 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
In this fifteenth episode, Dr. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In this first episode, Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook interviews Dr. Dwayne Donald who is a descendent of the Papachase Cree. Dwayne works as an Associate Professor within the Faculty of Education at the University of Alberta. During their conversation, Dwayne shares his perspectives on the current material, political, and spiritual contexts of living in social isolation and how it might provide an opportunity for us to rethink what it might mean to live well as human beings. He addresses some of the following concepts: nehiyaw concepts of 4, balance, unlearning, ethical relationality, treaty education, and serving as an oskâpêwis (an Elder’s helper).