Dr. 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. 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 and life writing research. Dr. Ng-A-Fook is currently part of several federally funded SSHRC partnership grants that seek to disrupt settler colonialism, systemic racisms, and inequities across the school and university curriculum. He is interested in collaborating with graduate students who are committed as Indigenous and non-Indigenous citizens toward challenging ongoing systemic inequities. He created the FooknConversation podcast to address these challenges with colleagues, community activists, artists, educational leaders, teachers, and politicians.
Recent Courses Taught
EDU 8105 - Contemporary Issues in Education (Doctoral Seminar)
Examination of current issues in education from multiple research traditions; exploration of students’ prospective PhD projects in relation to major trends in educational research. Click here to view the course outline. (Hybrid, 2022-2023; Online, Synchronous, 2021-2022)
EDU6102 - Seminar in Curriculum Studies
Seminar in Curriculum Studies is an online course designed to synthesize different curriculum studies scholarship put forth in coursework; analyze the contributions of curriculum scholars’ intellectual work and research to educational practice; and 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. Click here to view the course outline. (Online, Asynchronous, 2019-2020)
EDU5260 - Introduction to Curriculum Studies
This lived curriculum, of course, is not the curriculum as laid out in a plan, but a plan more or less lived out. It deserves the label « curriculum » as much as the plan deserves the label « curriculum-as-plan. » (Aoki, 1993, p. 257)
Canadian curriculum studies is an intellectually dynamic and ever-changing field. For Canadian curriculum scholars engaging the processes of situating and defining “curriculum” theorizing as -planned, -implemented, and -lived remains a historically situated and contested “complicated conversation.” Each week we will try to “reactivate,” “reconceptualize,” “reconstruct” and “complicate” our historical, present, and future understandings of the discrepancies between various disciplinary discourses, which in turn may inform our lived experiences inside and outside the contexts of institutional forms of education (Pinar, 2019). Moreover, our weekly online conversations will critically examine how such discrepancies create tensions between both internal and external stakeholders to the field of curriculum studies, and the very concept of “curriculum” writ large. This course thus invites us to participate in a personal and communal dialogue, indeed a “complicated conversation,” in which we will be asked to recursively consider existing systemic and alternative approaches toward understanding our conceptions of the curriculum-as-planned, -implemented, and – lived in relation to the current contexts of the 2020 pandemic. Click here to view the course outline. (Online, Asynchronous, 2019-2020; Hybrid, 2018-2019)
EDU7150 - Writing Towards Publication
This course is for graduate students who are interested in learning how to present their research at conferences and/or publishing it in scholarly journals. Click here to view the course outline. (Hybrid, 2019-2020)
EDU5199 - Synthesis Seminar
Synthesis Seminar is a final graduate studies course designed to synthesize different theoretical knowledges put forth in coursework; analyze the contributions of theoretical knowledges to educational practice; and integrate a critical analysis and synthesis of differing contributions and gaps of differing theoretical knowledges. Click here to view the course outline. (Online, Asynchronous, 2019-2020)