Background

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 recognise 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.

Questionnaire Service

Certain Knowledge is in the business of school improvement, dedicated to helping create highly effective schools. This cannot be achieved without good, systematic, accurate data and other information and leadership of the highest quality.

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.

Certain Knowledge has developed a set of highly sophisticated questionnaires and associated reports to provide timely and targeted information to assist leaders develop and review effective leadership and improvement strategies and to provide detailed feedback to teachers from their students. The questionnaires focus on:

• Leadership for learning
• Feedback on teaching and learning
• Improvement strategies for the middle years of schooling

These online questionnaires and reports are available to individual schools, clusters or networks of schools or for schools involved in particular system initiatives.

Certain Knowledge also provides bespoke online questionnaires and reports for special research, evaluation and development projects. Examples of this service are:

• Innovative Language Provision in Clusters Initiative in 14 clusters of Victorian Government schools (2011-2012),
• Performance and Development Culture Questionnaire for the Catholic Education Office, Melbourne (2009 – 2012),
• Pedagogy Change Project in 98 Victorian Government schools in Northern Metropolitan Region (2009-2010),
• Internationalising Education in Victoria Project for the International Education Division of the Victorian Department of Education and Early Childhood Development (2009),
• Purposes of Schooling in Australian Primary Schools Questionnaire for a research project titled ‘Education Investment in Australian Schooling: Serving Public Purposes’for the Australian Primary Principals Association and four Australian Universities (2009),
• Building Leadership Capacity program conducted in over 50 schools for the Catholic Education Office, Melbourne (2004 – 2008),
• Building Capacity for Improvement program conducted in 29 schools in conjunction with the Hay Group for the Victorian Department of Education and Training (2003 - 2005).

Please contact us if you require any further information on Certain Knowledge services.