Nicholas NG-A-FOOK

Assistant Professor

LMX 428

Telephone: (613) 562-5800-2239

E-Mail: nngafook@uOttawa.ca

Member of the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies

Nicholas Ng-A-Fook is an Assistant Professor of Curriculum Studies in the Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa. He holds a Ph.D. in Curriculum and Instruction with a minor concentration in Women and Gender Studies from Louisiana State University, U.S., an M. Ed. with a thesis from York University, Canada, and a Graduate Diploma in Science and History Education from the University of Western Sydney, Australia. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook's last research project was a critical ethnographic and oral history study of how the Louisiana state apparatus historically dictated educational exclusion through its infamous Jim Crow policies of racial segregation. It has since been published as a book entitled: An Indigenous Curriculum of Place. Utilizing participatory and collaborative ethnographic research methodologies he examined the life histories of United Houma Nation elders who in turn experienced firsthand the complexities and difficulties of institutional racism. He continues to work as a cross-cultural curriculum consultant with the United Houma Nation.

Nicholas Ng-A-Fook is currently working collaboratively on a well established and ongoing social justice project between the Faculty of Education at the University of Ottawa and the Canadian International Development Agency/ Agence canadienne de développement international (CIDA) entitled the Global Classroom Initiative/ L'initiative le monde en classe . His specific research interests for this project seek to study how students are able to integrate a global perspective throughout their curriculum planning, implementation, and assessment while also addressing the Ontario Ministry of Education's mandated curricular expectations in a course called Curriculum Design and Evaluation (see http://www.developingaglobalperspective.ca/homepage.html ). Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, Nicholas Ng-A-Fook is interested in how students develop critical perspectives of, as well as negotiate socio-culturally responsive strategies toward addressing such curricular absences within their present and future course programming.

Part of this project also involves the development of a permanent pre-service teacher candidate online newsletter and radio show for the website. The content for both the newsletter and radio show are developed in a foundations course called Schooling and Society. As a result, Nicholas Ng-A-Fook is currently researching how students are developing various curricular and pedagogical resources for this organization's website, and in turn how their engagement with these projects then informs their curriculum planning, implementation, and evaluation with regards to developing a global perspective as well as working toward integrating social justice issues within their future teaching.

This website now features all of the Developing a Global Perspective for Educator's activities over the course of the academic year , as well as pre-service candidates' curriculum contributions on themes of development and peace making. In addition, the constructive critiques of NGO resources , along with the resources themselves are posted on the website. As part of his course requirements pre-service teacher candidates are required to create a newsletter for the website which in turn addresses issues of child poverty, human rights, environmental sustainability, peace-making curricula, etc. Students are also required to engage in various Community Service Learning projects.

Books

DNg-A-Fook, N. (2007). An Indigenous Curriculum of Place: The United Houma Nation’s Contentious Relationship with Louisiana’s Educational Institutions. New York: Peter Lang.

Book Chapters

Ng-A-Fook, N. (in press, forthcoming 2008). Complicating a Curriculum of Being Inhabited by the Language of the Other in Canada. In James Nahachewsky, Ingrid Johnston, Hans Smits, Beyond ‘presentism’: Re-Imagining the Historical, Personal, and Social Places of Curriculum.

Refereed Journals Articles

Ng-A-Fook, N. (accepted, 2007, March). Understanding A Curriculum of Being Inhabited by the Language of the Other. Transnational Curriculum Inquiry Journal.

Ng-A-Fook, N. (2005). A Curriculum of Mother-Son Plots on Education’s Center Stage, Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 21 (4), pp. 43-58.

Ng-A-Fook, N. (2003). A Curriculum Behind the Boys’ Locker Room Doors: Bodies, Desires, and Perpetuating Patriarchy. Journal of Curriculum Theorizing, 19 (4), pp. 65-72.

Book Reviews

Ng-A-Fook, N. (2004). Tough Fronts: The Impacts of Street Culture on Schooling. Journal of Curriculum Studies, 36 (6), pp. 747-752.

Ng-A-Fook, N. & Matthews, S. (2007, May). Building a praxis of peace: integrating peace education into Ontario curricula. Multimedia workshop presented at the Ministry of Education/Faculties of Education Forum, Toronto, ON.

Ng-A-Fook, N. (2005). Weaving American Indian Education into the Curriculum. A one-day workshop for pre-service teachers at Louisiana State University.

Ng-A-Fook, N. (2003, November) Teaching Houma Culture and History from The Bayous Margins. Workshop presented at the annual meeting of National Indian Education Association. Greensboro, NC.

EDU 5260	Curriculum Theory and Organizational Practice
EDU 5221	Historical Narratives and Education
PED 3103	Curriculum Design and Evaluation
PED 3102	Schooling and Society
PED 3132	Learning Theories Applied to Science Education
PED 3131	General Science at the Intermediate Level