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Certain Knowledge was established in 2003 by a group of Melbourne based educators with interstate and international connections who are committed to applying knowledge and understanding to the challenge of improving learning for all young people.
The choice of Certain Knowledge as a banner emerged from two motivations. The first motivation is to commit our collective evidence based knowledge – certain knowledge - to tackling our shared passion – that all young peoples’ lives can be enriched and transformed by powerful learning, and that there is no excuse, given what we know, for accepting low levels of achievement or large discrepancies between high and low achievement.
The second motivation is to recognize that our confident ambition should be constantly challenged by a continuous search for new and improved ways of doing things – a recognition that our knowledge is always partial and limited – certain knowledge – and we seek through disciplined innovation, creativity and imagination to push the boundaries of our understanding.
The Certain Knowledge group of consultants are colleagues and friends. We are in the business of school improvement. We are dedicated to helping create highly effective schools. We know this cannot be achieved without good, systematic, accurate data and other information and leadership of the highest quality.
We know that highly effective leadership informed by high quality information ensures highly effective teaching which ensures highly effective learning, but to get these connections and the desired outcomes requires committed and skilful people, quality processes and enabling organisational structures.
The Certain Knowledge team knows it can make these connections. It does so at multiple levels. We promote school and system improvement and support and develop individual leaders and leadership teams to carry through this improvement - in their schools; their district and regional offices; their agencies; and in central government departments.
The scale of our work is local, national and international and the approach requires a disciplined methodology of data gathering and high level analysis and interpretation to improve practice. To this end, over the last eight years Certain Knowledge has developed a set of highly sophisticated survey instruments for use at system, cluster and individual school level as a basis for providing timely and targeted information to assist leaders develop effective improvement strategies.
We partner with associates on a project specific basis and we are constantly investing in products including customised surveys, on-line questionnaires and program materials.
Whilst we are based in Australia, our work takes us to the UK, US, Canada, New Zealand, Hong Kong, Europe and China.
We constantly remind ourselves that success is dependent upon an unrelenting focus on the application of “what works” and a search for “what could work better.”
As consultants we are a highly networked group of researchers, policy makers and practitioners. Whilst we will bring the discipline of research and development (including horizon scanning) activity, project design and delivery, quality tools and techniques, and sophisticated data analysis and interpretation, we are equally committed to quality relationships. We recognise that every project is an opportunity for the sharing of knowledge and the generation of new knowledge, spanning the areas of policy, research and practice.
We engage therefore in good work with people who share the same passion for and belief in the application of Certain Knowledge to help all young people to learn.
Some examples of the major programs and projects the Certain Knowledge team has developed and implemented in recent years include: