Fookn Conversation - Talking About “Academicky” Stuff

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.