Trudy Graham wrote this in 2009.
What is KPS all about? Some background information for teachers
The term Knowledge Producing Schools and its acronym KPS were first introduced by Chris Bigum, a key researcher and academic. The term refers collectively to a particular set of educational initiatives undertaken in schools in response to changing dynamics of computing, communication, knowledge and relationships. Leonie Rowan, Colin Lankshear, Michele Knobel, Sue DeVincentis and Bridget Somekh have also written and contributed to the research.
For Bigum the concept arises from two key ideas or memes:
1. reading the changes in the world beyond school as fundamentally about changed relationships which leads to a reconsideration of what roles schools might have in a changed world; and
2. that in a world of over abundant information what will matter most is point of view or expertise and for a community this means expertise in itself, knowledge about its own backyard. (Paul Saffo (1994). It’s the Context, Stupid. Wired, 2(3), 74-75.)
Knobel and Lankshear provide a succinct definition of the approach in “Making Literacy Real”.
‘Doing pedagogy’ in KPS projects is built on developing new and interesting relationships with groups in their local communities, by engaging in processes that generate truly useful products or performances that are valued by the ‘clienteles’ for whom they have been produced. An important part of negotiating the production of such knowledge is that the product or performance is something that students see as being valued by the consumer or audience of their work and is evaluated using the same criteria applied to evaluating adult-produced products or performances. The students know their work is taken seriously, and that it has to be good or else it will not be acceptable to those who have commissioned it.
Some key characteristic that KPS initiatives explore are:
Schools’ relationship with community
Bigum and Rowan in “Renegotiating Knowledge Relationships in Schools” identifies,
“There are four kinds of relationships we see as particularly important: relationships between schools and knowledge work; between students and schools; between students and teachers; and between schools, students, teachers and their communities.”
“Within the KPS approach, education becomes a ‘whole of community’ responsibility, and schools become a knowledge producing resource for their communities.”
Some early examples of KPS work highlighted a “two way”, reciprocal nature of these relationships. Firstly, as identified above, students create products or performances for “community” as real consumers or audience for their work.
The second is using community personnel as “consultant experts” to work with students. In this mode, the students draw on relevant expertise for the kind of production being undertaken at the time, much of which will come from people who are not school personnel. (Moore, R., & Young, M. (2001). Knowledge and the Curriculum in the Sociology of Education: towards a reconceptualisation. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 22(4), 445-461.
Is the product, performance, solution or service for a real audience or consumer?
Does the project use community personnel as “consultant experts” to work with students?
Value beyond the “fridge door”
This is a term coined by Bigum to describe the usual publishing of student work that occurs in schools, i.e. Tom does an assignment on Africa. Teacher attaches the appropriate commendations/comments. Tom takes it home proudly to Mum who “publishes” it on the fridge door. A couple of days later, the item is then quietly consigned to the recycling bin. Simply, the product has an audience of 2-3 people tops. It’s not taken particularly seriously.
Specifically KPS projects are valued by broader audiences. The audience is clearly defined and understood. Often accompanying this are negotiations, consultation, specified requirements and time lines for the work.
Are the students creating a product or performance, solving a problem or providing a community service that is clearly defined?
Does the product, performance, solution or service provide value beyond the classroom and/or the “fridge door”?
Students are positioned as producers of knowledge
It is important to be clear here. This is not about students doing work to rediscover an already known world but doing genuine, serious, well supported knowledge work. By definition “knowledge work” includes learning, teaching, producing and sharing knowledge. KPS question whether it is possible to make a move from seeing students not only as consumers of other people’s knowledge (or even as the beneficiaries of other people’s research); but rather as producers of knowledge in their own right.
We use the term ‘knowledge work’ here to locate students with other more commonly acknowledged knowledge workers. Like all those folk who collect, manipulate and produce some kind of product (now often digital) to achieve some useful end – report, analysis, map, etc.
Michael Wesch explains, “As we increasingly move toward an environment of instant and infinite information, it becomes less important for students to know, memorize, or recall information, and more important for them to be able to find, sort, analyze, share, discuss, critique, and create information. They need to move from being simply knowledgable to being knowledge-**able** .”
Knowledge producing students generate new knowledge by creating something that did not previously exist. They
1. accumulate necessary background knowledge from disciplines
2. apply this in new situations that are relevant, useful and valued in a particular context.
3. innovate on the use, improve or replace knowledge to produce new “products”.
Have the students created something that previously did not exist?
Not “playing school”, but learning from life
It is a natural adjunct that students work on authentic tasks in the real world with real audiences. The learning experience is designed around students creating a product or performance, solving a real life problem or undertaking a community development project. Consequently what is being asked of the students would be a legitimate work, social, personal or community pursuit of anyone in the “real world”.
In stark contrast, much of what we ask of students to do, work on or complete in schools is framed in a school context. When students are “playing school” everything is pretend.
Is there someone in the real world that does what you are asking of students as a legitimate work, social, personal or community pursuit?
Other associated themes
When working with a knowledge-producing schools mindset other recurring themes are:
1. The notion of students as researchers and the school’s systematic collection of useful data.
2. Youth learning how to act in and on the world; having agency and “voice”.
3. Production of students’ products that are comparable in scope, approach and quality
to expert productions...quality that elicits the response, “Wow, Did kids do that?”
Trudy Graham (May 2009)