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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 distributed decision-making process is addressed through this paper. The position taken suggests that leadership does not reside solely with principals or other education leaders, but sustains the view that the actions of various actors within a school setting contribute to fuller and more comprehensive accounts of distributed leadership.

While the application of rational/analytical approaches to organizational problems or issues can lead to effective decisions, dilemmas faced by principals are often messy, complex, ill-defined and not easily resolved through algorithmic reason or by the application of rules, as evidenced by the two stories provided by Agnes, a third-year principal in a small countryside elementary school in a small northeastern community, and by John, a novice principal in a suburb of a large Southwestern metropolitan area.

The value of the objective knowledge growth framework (OKGF) process is found in its ability to focus Agnes’s attention on things that she may have overlooked, such as options she might have ignored or information that she might have resisted or accepted, as well as innumerable preparations she might have neglected had she not involved all the teachers in her school.

The implementation of the OKGF may appear, occasionally, to introduce unnecessary points along this route and may not be laboriously applied to all decision-making situations. However, the instinctively pragmatic solutions provided by this framework will often produce effective results. Therefore, in order to reduce potentially irrational outcomes, the systematic approach employed by the OKGF is preferable. The OKGF must be managed, implemented and sustained locally if it is to provide maximum benefits to educational decision makers.

Given the principals’ changing roles, it is abundantly clear that leadership practice can no longer involve just one person, by necessity, and it is becoming increasingly difficult to imagine how things could have been accomplished otherwise. Expecting the principal to single-handedly lead efforts to improve instruction is impractical, particularly when leadership may be portrayed as what school principals do, especially when other potential sources of leadership have been ignored or treated as secondary or unimportant because that leadership has not emanated from the principal’s office (Spillane, 2006). In this paper, the authors have striven to reveal how a perspective of distributed leadership, when used in conjunction with the objective knowledge growth framework, can be effective in assisting principals in resolving problems of practice.

Different school leaders of varying status within the educative organization benefit from obtaining different answers to similar issues, as evidenced by John’s and Agnes’s leadership tangles. Lumby and English (2009) differentiate between “routinization” and “ritualization.” They argue, “They are not the same. The former erases the need for human agency while the latter requires it” (p. 112). The OKGF process, therefore, cannot provide school leaders with the “right” answers to their educative quandaries, simply because any two school leaders, facing the same issues, may utilize differing theories, solutions, choices or options which may satisfy their issues in response to their own individual contextual factors. Similarly, in a busy day or week, school leaders may be inclined to take the shortest distance between two points in the decision-making process; problem identification to problem resolution.

Should the OKGF process empower decision makers to obtain sound resolutions to their educative issues by assisting them in distancing themselves from emotions or confirmation biases that may distract them from resolving school problems, its use will have been worthwhile.

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.

A scenario is created to illustrate the concept of using OKGF.

The framework aims to support decision makers in identifying the challenges they face, encourages them to act on their tentative theories, and to be attentive to the outcomes. It requires a deeper understanding of the problem by shifting the spotlight to the teaching scores; multiple perspectives for reaching a solution; testing different options (solutions/theories) by seeking out information that challenges ones beliefs and biases so as not to overlook a viable solution; and ensuring a fair and just process.

Research can be expanded by developing an empirical research study and to validate the findings.

It is a high stakes evaluation that may result in unjustified dismissal.

The paper is original in that the tenure process has not come under scrutiny under a conceptual framework such as the OKGF.

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 and resolving common problems. Second, the evolution of the CPLN web site is presented and recount the challenges faced and collaborative solved by principals. Finally, the paper describes the OKGF based on the critical rationalism of Karl Popper and how principals, engaging and interacting in an online learning community (CPLN) informed their decision-making process.

The paper mindfully assembled an international team of researchers with administration experience, curriculum knowledge and pedagogy, and whose research interests lay in educational leadership, education administration, change theory, educational policy and professional learning. Also in addition, principals who were current graduate students, and new researchers also joined the research team.

The CPLN web site using OKGF, is a step forward in providing principals with a structure and a venue to be reflective and collaborative. However, getting them to interact with each other in a collaborative, reflective online learning community was not an easy feat at the beginning (Lieberman and Miller, 2008; Louis and Kruse, 1995; Schmoker, 2006; Wagner and Kegan, 2006; Bryk et al., 2010; McLaughlin and Talbert, 2002; Stoll and Louis, 2007). The study shows principals find the need for a place to reflect, discuss, experiment, practice and learn and, for this group of principals, that place is the CPLN.

This study provides a model for principals’ learning in an online learning community using the OKGF. As well, it shows that powerful leadership does not just take place during preparation programmes, but that principals need to continue to learn as they lead in their respective schools (Mitgang and Maeroff, 2008). Sharing of the challenges faced and the learning that occurred principals are capable of addressing not only the challenges posed in their schools but also, as numerous researchers note (Fry et al., 2006; Levine, 2005; Mitgang and Maeroff, 2008), of surviving the job themselves.

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 educational institutions, including teaching hospitals, by considering what does and does not happen when learning takes place.

To illustrate how Popper’s approach differs from such a conception of learning, the paper examines the exchange between a preceptor (Sam) and a medical student (Lisa). The following exchange is based on the observations during a team meeting in a Canadian teaching hospital. The authors sent the transcript of the observation to Lisa for her comments. The statements in italics represent Lisa’s additions. Pseudonyms are used to protect the identity of participants in the exchange.

Popper’s evolutionary analysis of learning and the Objective Knowledge Growth Framework provide a means of managing specific aspects of one’s education through engaging in this learning process. Although this approach to teaching and decision making takes time to master, it does not require reconstituting existing institutional arrangements before it can be implemented in hospitals. Instead, it asks medical students, teachers and practitioners to be open to the theoretical underpinnings of the approach and to view knowledge growth as a process of systematic trial and error elimination.

This paper is original in its conceptualisation and may well become a classic in education circles. It draws on Popper’s philosophical arguments and enters into a much needed discourse for teaching and learning.

In Canada, food insecurity is characterized by the consumption of low quantity or low-quality foods, worrying about food supply and/or acquiring foods in socially unacceptable ways, such as begging or scavenging. As of 2012, approximately 15.2% of Ontario, Canada, children are living in food insecure households, a prevalence which has remained steady since 2005. This is particularly concerning when considering that school-aged children are a population whose growth and developing is sensitive to nutritional stress, and the experience of childhood food insecurity is highly associated with the development of adverse physical, mental and learning outcomes. This study aims at establishing the relationship between food insecurity and Education Quality and Accountability Office (EQAO) standardized test scores in order to highlight the incompatibility of the EQAO's reliance on test outcomes in determining Ontarian school's accountability, specifically for those with a high prevalence of food insecurity.