Keynote speakers
Prof. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook
Dr. Nicholas Ng-A-Fook is a full professor in the Faculty of Education. He is the former Vice-Dean of Graduate Studies, and Director of the Teacher Education and Indigenous Teacher Education Programs. 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. Professor 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 podcast FooknConversation to address these challenges with colleagues, community activists, artists, educational leaders, teachers, and politicians. Learn more about his research at A Canadian Curriculum Theory Project.
Abstract for the presentation
Title: Responding to Truth Before Reconciliation: A “Step” Forward for Our Children. For this presentation Nicholas Ng-A-Fook draws on his different research projects at a Canadian Curriculum Theory Project to discuss the ethical, curricular, and philosophical implications of addressing historical truths before reconcilia(c)tions in relation to contemporary educational contexts. To do so, he draws in part on Jacques Derrida’s philosophical meditations to take up the phrasing “un pas” en avant pour nos enfants—meaning both “a step” and “a not.” In turn, he addresses the paradoxes embedded in the idea of “taking a step forward” for our children in the name of truths before reconciliation in terms of what may be appropriated and/or excluded as we stive toward becoming more inclusive human beings. Aligned with calls for plural, inclusive, and equitable education for this conference theme, Nicholas Ng-A-Fook suggests that responding to historical truths before taking up reconcilia(c)tions is not a linear process or a predetermined future, but a fragile and unfinished engagement with an unknowable futurity. Such a step, or non-step, opens a space of undecidability, where educators, communities, and children move together through rereading and challenging settler colonial accounts of the past, silenced histories, toward putting forth more equitable, yet unknowable futures. To imagine otherwise—toward a future that remains always undecided—Nicholas Ng-A-Fook presentation calls on us to revisit, restory, and recontextualize current historical narrative truths that have shaped our understandings of the past, present, and future. This act of restorying is a curricular and intergenerational responsibility, where stories become sites of resonance, rupture, and potential reconcilia(c)tions not just with each other, but also with the more-than-human world. How might we understand such pedagogical revisiting with past historical accounts as a forewarning of potential technological futurities yet to come? Finally, Nicholas Ng-A-Fook suggests reimagining our relations with the very concept of “curriculum” may enable a coursing toward a different kind step toward the future.
Selected recent publications
Ng-A-Fook, N. (2024). Reconstructing Curriculum Studies in Canada: Life Writing, Settler Colonialism, Truth and then Reconciliation. In William - F. Pinar & Anne Phelan. (Eds.), (pp. 183-202). Curriculum Studies in Canada: Present Preoccupations. Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press. Wiscutie-Crepeau, N., & Ng-A-Fook, N., & Joncas, J., Pageau, L. (2023). (Introduction). La portée de la Commission de vérité et de réconciliation dans les contextes francophones canadiens. La Revue de l'association canadienne pour l'étude du curriculum (RACÉC), 20(1), pp. 1-11. Howell, L., & Ng-A-Fook, N. (2023). Just Because we’re small doesn’t mean we can’t stand tall: Reconciliation Education in the Elementary School Classroom. Studies in Social Justice, 17(1), pp. 112-135. (SSHRC Funded)
Prof. Nadia Abu-Zahra
Dre. Nadia Abu-Zahra is a Professor of International Development and Global Studies at the University of Ottawa. She co-facilitates, with Professor Emily Regan Wills, the Community Mobilization in Crisis (CMIC) project, which co-creates open-access: educational resources in four languages in community mobilisation; creative tools like a role play to further social justice in higher education; and mini-documentaries sharing community initiatives for learning and collective wellbeing (https://cmic-mobilize.org/case-studies/ and https://cmic-mobilize.org/cmic-courses/). CMIC is a member of the Connected Learning in Crisis Consortium (CLCC), the Wellbeing Project Higher Education Network, and the Ecoversities Alliance, and has been supported by the Open Society Foundations, National Geographic Society, Government of Canada, Ottawa Community Foundation, eCampusOntario, SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada), Canada's National Research and Education Network, and the United Nations Association, among others. From 2019 to 2023, Professor Abu-Zahra held a national endowed research chair, the Joint Chair in Women's Studies at the University of Ottawa and Carleton University. As co-founder of the Voices: Activists in Exile project (https://voicesinexile.ca/), she also co-facilitates policy advocacy, community building, research, and collaborative scholarship on transnational activism. She speaks five languages, has over 30 peer-reviewed publications, and has won awards for community and media activities, teaching and pedagogies, and applied research. She is a Principal Researcher in the Centre for Research on Educational and Community Services, an Academic Member of the University of Ottawa Human Rights Research and Education Centre, and a UNESCO Inclusive Policy Lab expert. She holds a doctorate from the University of Oxford, and was a SSHRC Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellow, and a Research Fellow at the University of Oxford Refugee Studies Centre.
Abstract for the presentation
Title: Learners All, Teachers All The role of the university is in flux, and pressures to operate transactionally — tuition for degrees, with larger classes, precarious labour, automated services, centralised decision-making, and decreased quality interaction — are on the rise. Are these pressures the best response to the capacities offered by digital change, like artificial intelligence, learning management systems, social media, and others? Will these pressures truly “make money” as some post-secondary education decision-makers seem to believe (perhaps partly in response to reduced public funding)? Based on a series of thematic literature reviews, as well as discussions held in communities of practice, and experience in altered classroom practices (including, but not limited to, project-based learning) over a period of eight years, this presentation identifies some of the possible shifts that could take place in post-secondary education institutions, and particularly in learning environments like courses and classes, toward healthier, more egalitarian relations. The presentation will offer examples of specific past outcomes of collaborative learning efforts, and give details of the precise conditions that fostered these outcomes. The presentation will conclude with reflections on how post-secondary education can edge closer to lifelong learning and to greater collective wellbeing as both a means and an end.
Selected recent publications
Wills, E. R., Richani, D. E., & Abu-Zahra, N. (2020). Building New Practices of Solidarity: The Community Mobilisation in Crisis Project. Gender & Development, 28(1), 51–68. https://doi.org/10.1080/13552074.2020.1717174 Abu-Zahra, N., Richani, D. E., & Wills, E. R. (2019). Post-Secondary Education in and Beyond Forced Migration Contexts. Oxford Monitor of Forced Migration, 8(1), 81–88. El-Ahmed, N., & Abu-Zahra, N. (2016). Unfulfilled Promise: Palestinian Family Reunification and the Right of Return. Journal of Palestine Studies, 45(3), 24–39. https://doi.org/10.1525/jps.2016.45.3.24
Prof. Raoul Kamga Kouamkam
Raoul Kamga est professeur au Département de didactique de l’Université du Québec à Montréal et coresposable de l’équipe de recherche sur le numérique en éducation (ÉNUMED). Depuis plusieurs années, il contribue à la formation initiale et continue du personnel enseignant. Ses travaux portent principalement sur le développement de la compétence numérique chez les enseignants et les élèves. Ses recherches explorent également la résolution collaborative de problèmes à travers des tâches pédagogiques intégrant la programmation informatique, la robotique éducative et l’intelligence artificielle.
Abstract for the presentation
Titre: La formation du personnel enseignant dans un contexte marqué par l’intelligence artificielle générative : enjeux et pistes de transformation. Résumé: Cette conférence propose une réflexion et des résultats de recherche, sous un angle socioculturel, sur les enjeux actuels de la formation du personnel enseignants dans un contexte marqué par les avancées rapides de l’intelligence artificielle générative. Cette conférence sera à la fois interactive et réflexive. Les participants seront invités non seulement à écouter, mais aussi à partager leurs réflexions et à contribuer activement à la discussion.
Selected recent publications
- Kamga, R., Fournier, F., Barma, S. et Lachance, P. (15 novembre 2023). Pertinence variable des activités de robotique pédagogique visant la résolution collaborative de problèmes. Présenté au colloque ROC, en ligne. - Kamga, R., & Mercier, M.-A. (2023). Rendre l'erreur productive en programmation informatique. 41e Colloque de l¿AQUOPS, Québec. - Kamga, R., Fiset, S., et Trudel, G. (2022). Pratiques technopédagogiques mises en place par les conseillers pédagogiques du RÉCIT pour accompagner les enseignants durant la pandémie. Colloque du CRIFPE, Montréal. - Kamga, R., Berube-Daigneault, J., et Cool-Charest, S. (2022). Usages de l'intelligence artificielle dans l'enseignement primaire. Colloque du CRIFPE, Montréal.
