SELECTED RESEARCH PROJECTS
Life and Works of Ted Tetsuo Aoki
Principal Investigator
Through careful examination of Ted Aoki’s life and work within its historical, societal and intellectual context, this research and book publication advance a new appreciation of the national distinctiveness of Canadian curriculum studies.
The research draws a unique comparison between Aoki’s writings and Heidegger’s concept of “being-in-the-world.” In exploring Aoki’s narratives on momentous life events, this research attends to the interwoven, dynamic and poetic essence of the scholar’s intellectual formation and identifies a critically reflective style of theorizing. By contextualizing Aoki’s narrations on his momentous life events, the research and publication engage with Aoki’s critical reflective and unique style of theorizing and foreground the prominent influence of Heidegger’s phenomenology and writings on Aoki’s thinking.
A major contribution to understanding Aoki’s curriculum scholarship, this research and the book publication are important resources for researchers and post-graduate students working across curriculum studies discourse.
Life and Works of Max van Manen
Principal Investigator
Phenomenological inquiries have become a prominent domain of Canadian curriculum scholarship since the 1980s. Most of the phenomenological research in the Canadian field of curriculum studies has occurred at the University of Alberta. Max van Manen and others (e.g., Ted Tetsuo Aoki, Kenneth Jacknicke and Terrence Carson) have contributed greatly to “institutionalizing" this European intellectual tradition in the Department of Secondary Education at the University of Alberta. Given its influence, the field of phenomenological curriculum studies warrants greater attention.
​
This research anchors van Manen’s intellectual life history and his works specifically within Canadian history and culture, and the field of Canadian curriculum studies in the phenomenological tradition.
​
​
Canadian Curriculum Topography: Intellectual Auto/biography and Epistemology of Place
Principal Investigator
This research aims to create an anthology of Canadian curriculum scholars' intellectual journey in relation to their place stories to illuminate a Canadian curriculum topography. Canada is a vast, multi-national state with many regions and various Indigenous peoples. Historically, it is a country born of colonialism, accommodating Asian immigrants on the West Coast and African American refugees in the Eastern and Central provinces. There is a significance of place and its relationship to curriculum, education, identity and life, especially within a Canadian context. By examining the curriculum scholars' life stories, intellectual biographies, and their relation to curriculum theory/izing, this research explores the place in a regional context that highlights the significance of the place to curriculum theory/izing. Place becomes an important means to link particularity to the sociocultural and political concerns of curriculum theory/izing.
