Is the Universe actually contracting instead of expanding?

My dad and I were talking about what happened before the big bang and he went off and started talking about a cyclic universe and how the universe contracts to a single point from gravity, and then expands again.

Now I don't know if this is a misconception or not, but I told him that the expansion of the Universe was actually sppeding up, instead of slowing down like we would see in the cyclic universe. He then said that this could be explained if we were in the contraction phase of the cycle.

The galaxies would still appear to be getting farther away from us if this was true, as the ones closer to the center of the universe would accelerate faster away from us, while we would accelerate faster then the galixes farther away from the center of the universe. I thought this made sence, but it is probably wrong.

So is the universe actually contracting?