fooknconversation

Episode 13: Nicholas Ng-A-Fook

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…

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Black Lives Matter: A Case Against the Defense of Fragile Beliefs

A blog by Aaron Drake. Cathryn van Kessel, in her podcast interview with Nicholas Ng-A-Fook reminds us, that if we are not standing up against the evil banalities of everyday life, we fall privy to believing that atrocities are behind us, and not possible in today’s context.  As I hope to illustrate, this is far…

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(Re)Narrating Settler Colonialism in the Stories we tell Ourselves and Others

A blog by Daniel MacKinnon. Moving to Nova Scotia to attend university forced me to present a personal narrative. I was an outsider. But I had an answer ready: I was no “upper Canadian” tourist. I had family in Nova Scotia. We had been visiting almost every summer of my childhood. Nova Scotia was internalized…

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Entities of Land and Water: Teaching against a Terrible Fate

A blog By Patrick Phillips. In 2019 Dr. Erica Dodds, chief operating officer at the Foundation for Climate Restoration, ran a “climate reality” workshop for a Washington, D.C. high school. She asked students, “What would life look like in 30 years?” The answers were not idyllic vistas of a prosperous world. In fact, “the answers…

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Taking ‘Care’ in Curriculum

A reader’s response to Dr. Hongyu Wang’s nonviolent relationality by Patrick Phillips. I, like others in our immediate (EDU6102) writing community, approached Dr. Hongyu Wang’s alignment with Jungian psychoanalytic theory with some skepticism; psychoanalysis often connotes certain kinds of historical and epistemological baggage. However, I realised that I appreciate the practicality of Wang’s application of…

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Fetishized Facts and Figures in B-Flat Minor

A blog by Sarah Schmidt. Facts and figures allow us to compartmentalize our understanding and relation to acts of evil. By summarizing horrific and complicated events into an accessible narrative of evil, we provide a connotation of absolutism (Romig, 2012). It removes the need or ability to truly understand, let alone acknowledge or relate to,…

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Episode 12: William F. Pinar

In this twelfth episode, Dr. Nicholas 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…

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Consciously Unconscious Contributions of Inequity

A blog by Sarah Schmidt. As a person of white privilege, working in a female and white-dominated profession of librarianship, listening and reading Vidya Shah while reflecting on the local and global events of the last few weeks’ left me with the need to sit, listen, and contemplate deeply on how to move forward, especially…

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Anti-Black Racism in Nursing Education

A blog by Bahareh Samsamiardekani. Canada’s first nursing school opened in 1874 in Ontario. The first baccalaureate nursing programs began in 1919 at the university of British Columbia. Black students were not permitted to attend nursing programs until 1984 (Jefferies, 2020). In the contemporary era, although racism is neglected in nursing curricula, black nursing students…

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White Uniforms Policing Black Lives

A blog by Sara Anne Petrucci. On March 27th, 2020 Ottawa-Carleton School Board Trustee, Donna Blackburn harassed a black student athlete playing basketball alone in a public park. She snapped a photo of the under-aged student and posted it onto her social media account stating, Apparently I have another title Park Patrol. This kid has…

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