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 interviews Stephen Hurley the 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, and interconnections among 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.