Stephanie Chitpin

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Ottawa

Stephanie Chitpin was born in Hong Kong to unwed parents. A few days later, an infant girl in a woven straw basket was transported illegally to the island of Mauritius off the coast of Africa by Ah Oak, head nun of a Buddhist temple with the help of Mr. Chui, a benevolent Chinese businessman. The book is available in your local book stores, on Ama...

Keep My Memory Safe chronicles my life in the temple and in Mauritius, and my move to Canada. Available at #Baraka, on Amazon and in bookstores on May 1, 2023. All proceeds from the sales of this book goes to Ah Feeti of Fook Soo Am Memorial Scholarship @uOttawaEdu @ELN_RLE

The COVID-19 pandemic has presented novel and unprecedent challenges within the educational realm, from the closure of educational establishments and the rapid implementation of e-learning to monitoring and managing the spread of the virus within the school community. The present research in Ontario, Canada, a province which has experienced prolong...

AhFeeti of Fook Soo Am Memorial Scholarship

You are cordially invited to submit your book proposal for the Series " Transforming Education Through Critical Leadership, Policy and Practice." If interested, please contact me or my colleagues, Sharon Kruse and Howard Stevenson @schitpin, @eln_rle #educationalleadership #leadershipchallenge

Purpose Sensemaking is the difficult art which lies at the heart of academia. Academics bring their own ways of examining and explaining things they see. A key challenge for Carrie is how to make sense of complex and challenging situations, recognize available solutions, choose the best path moving forward, and convey all of the above to the differ...

This article proposes a new framework for Principals called the Objective Knowledge Growth Framework (OKGF) that is designed to help them make more effective decisions in resolving problems of practice. It also provides a structure to help principals break away from education systems that impose inductive practices, as it provides a framework for s...

Decision making and leadership

In the Canadian province of Saskatchewan, the Ministry of Education has encouraged sociocultural and linguistic diversity within schools. Yet, as is typical within neoliberal societies, standardized assessments continue to be promoted for evaluating student progress and for the validity of in-school assessments. Standardized testing is designed usi...

Purpose The present study contributes to research that examines the meanings of achievement gaps, when enacting policy. Its findings are both hopeful and unsettling. The absence of equitable outcomes and democratic citizenship, as elements of closing the achievement gaps in our participants' definitions, are troubling, particularly within the conte...

This article has no abstract.

A study of nine headteachers in England, using a research protocol developed and carried out in Ontario, finds implications for the professional development of school leaders with respect to their decision-making to achieve greater equity. The types of professional development that leaders found to be most effective within their particular contexts...

This paper explores the student achievement-related decisionmaking processes of eight school principals in Ontario, Canada. First, we describe Ontario’s public education system with respect to neo-liberalism and student achievement. Next, we review general approaches to reducing the achievement gap as it pertains to matters of race. We then show ho...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to know the extent to which a decision-making framework assists in providing holistic, comprehensive descriptions of strategies used by school leaders engaging with distributed leadership practices. The process by which principals and other education leaders interact various school-based actors to arrive at a di...

The books in this new series explore both leadership and policy for learning, equity, diversity, social justice, and anti-oppressive education in the context of decision-making in neoliberal times. Bringing together major theorists from the social and political sciences to critical studies of educational leadership and policy, the volumes in this s...

Purpose Through a series of critical discussions on Karl Popper’s evolutionary analysis of learning and the non-authoritarian values it promotes, the purpose of this paper is to advocate a Popperian approach for building medical student knowledge. Specifically, it challenges positivist assumptions that permeate the design and management of many edu...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how associationism mistakenly assumes that direct experience is possible; that is, there is expectation-free observation and association without prior expectation. Thus, associationism assumes that learning involves the absorption of information from the environment itself. However, contrary argum...

Through a series of critical discussions on Karl Popper’s evolutionary analysis of learning and the non-authoritarian values it promotes, this paper advocates a Popperian approach for building medical student knowledge. Specifically, it challenges positivist assumptions that permeate the design and management of many educational institutions, inclu...

Challenging the theory of induction in teacher education, this book proposes a knowledge-building framework based on the critical rationalism of philosopher of science, Karl Popper. The Objective Knowledge Growth Framework developed in this book is designed to be an effective critical analysis framework for empowering teachers and schools to build...

This paper uses a personal experience to illustrate how implicit assumptions and unstated expectations can be found in the corporate world. It offers to answer the following questions that will lead to an examination of overcoming irrationality through utilization of the Popperian philosophy of associationism. Why do insurance companies provide a s...

Leadership is a highly complex activity, as leaders respond to increasing diversity and external accountability. Additionally, there is increased recognition that leadership is deeply contextual, sensitive to macro-politics of systems and micro-politics of individual schools. In Ontario, Canada, the school improvement effort is focused on raising s...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to utilize the Objective Knowledge Growth Framework (OKGF) to promote a better understanding of the evaluating tenure and promotion processes. Design/methodology/approach – A scenario is created to illustrate the concept of using OKGF. Findings – The framework aims to support decision makers in identifying t...

This paper examines a model of decision-making within the context of current and emerging regimes of accountability being proposed and implemented for school systems in a number of jurisdictions. These approaches to accountability typically involve the use of various measurable student learning outcomes as well as other measures of performance to d...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to use the Objective Knowledge Growth Framework (OKGF) in the development and maintenance of the Canadian Principal Learning Network (CPLN) to advance principals’ knowledge and skills in the area of decision making. First, the paper presents the inception of the CPLN, to assist principals in making decisions a...

Popper’s theory of learning is sometimes met with incredulity because Popper claims that there is no transference of knowledge or knowledge elements from outside the individual, neither from the physical environment nor from others. Instead, he claims that we can improve our present theories by discovering their inadequacies.The intent of this arti...

Over a series of influential publications, the philosopher of science, Karl Popper, developed an account of how scientific knowledge grows. This article explores the use of Popper’s account, referred to here as the Objective Knowledge Growth Framework (OKGF), in order to guide the growth of professional knowledge among a group of pre-service teache...

This article explores elements of the professional development of a pre‐tenured teacher education professor. I am that professor and I trace my journey of growth, which was aided by peer mentoring. First, I present a brief discussion on literature associated with mentoring that I found pertinent, followed by how mentoring has emerged as I re‐design...

There are relatively few studies that seek the informative voice of principals on their experiences and understanding of reflective practice to promote lifelong learning in their roles as curriculum leaders. The Objective Knowledge Growth Framework (OKGF) is a self-directed reflective tool, which enables teachers to develop the habit of reflection....

Pre-service teachers are typically concerned with student assessment and view related issues through varied experiences and backgrounds. Understanding how they think about assessment issues within the current educational context helps to better prepare them. In this paper we describe pre-service teachers' thinking about assessment issues, the theor...

This paper advocates a Popperian approach for empowering teachers to build knowledge when faced with uncertainty or obstacles. It begins with a discussion of the need for schools to use a critical approach for knowledge development and sharing of knowledge. Next, I discuss Popper's three core concepts of critical rationalism to illustrate its relev...

There are relatively few studies that seek the informative voice of principals on their experiences and understanding of reflective practice to promote lifelong learning in their roles as curriculum leaders. The Objective Knowledge Growth Framework (OKGF) is a self-directed reflective tool, which enables teachers to develop the habit of reflection....

This study was conducted with 15 pre-service teachers enrolled in the Reflective Practice Seminar in primary/junior division at a Canadian university. Data were gathered through interviews, informal classroom conversations and reflections over an eight-month period. This article considers the issue of how constructing a professional portfolio helps...

This empirical study, conducted in a Canadian university, argues that the objective knowledge growth framework (OKGF), a self-directed reflective approach, can contribute to the professional development of pre-service teachers in dealing with the complexities of teaching. The paper seeks to answer the following research question: How do pre-service...

The study reported in this article is derived from a critical analysis of the work of 28 pre‐service teachers enrolled in the course “Teaching elementary language arts” in a Bachelor of Education concurrent program in a southern State university. The pre‐service teachers were taught how to use an innovative knowledge‐building framework based on the...

This study explores the effectiveness of journal keeping as a means of developing reflective practice in pre‐service teachers using the Popperian knowledge‐building framework. The data focus on the entries of 28 pre‐service teachers. The issues identified by pre‐service teachers ranged from curricula to classroom management to assessment. The quali...

This paper offers an analysis of how six experienced teachers, and two in particular, used portfolios to aid and chart steps in their own professional development. The key finding of the study was that the pattern of growth of professional knowledge conformed strikingly to the central features of the model proposed by the philosopher of science, Ka...

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Toronto, 2003. Includes bibliographical references.