Complexities

After a terrific time at the KPS conference in Geelong over the weekend (Thankyou!) I thought I would act on Chris' encouragement and write in this blog space. I have taken the KPS complexities that I cruised through in the later part of my presentation and have phrased them as questions here. Since I suggested my Executive Director and the meddling academics have "ask hard questions" in their job descriptions I guess the flip side is people in schools like me work on providing the answers. (But also reserve the right to ask them back!) So here goes...

Q. What is the definition of "community"?
Answer for me to date has been an individual or group at school, local or global level. Also has to be beyond the classroom walls and "fridge door".

Q. How do schools identify their community uniqueness, 'point of view' and potential opportunities to build relationships with their community?
Might be useful here to review "point of view". Other than being observent, listening to folk from all sectors, being open minded and capitalising on opportunites I don't have any greater insights. Do others?

Q. Is the KPS agenda easier to establish in rural schools than city, metropolitian or provincial sites?
Now at Allenstown (a large school in Rockhampton, Qld, Aust) I can start to challenge my own beliefs and assumptions behind this one. To this point I would believe that it is infinetly easier. PS I've worked in a rural community in North Qld where "dinosaurs" would be a legitimate learning experience. Marine Fossils sit on the desks of kids in Richmond as paper weights...too bad if they are the missing peice to some rare archelogical find.

Q. What motivates community organisations (read also as 'corporations') to engage with school sites and students?
Being a part of the Waraburra developments I have some observations and ideas on this that would make a good post all on its own. stay tuned.

Q. How do we know (measure) students are developing as Life Long Learners? (In Qld this is defined in terms of characteristics such as Thinking, Understanding, Creating, Investigating, Communicating, Participating, Reflecting) Aside from collecting work samples and anecdotes as evidence, my greatest sense has been we just get them trained by year 7 and then we lose them to the secondary school. The students become essential "workers" within the school who are highly reliable, responsible and effective in carrying a miriad of tasks you may call on them to undertake.

Q. What impact does KPS agenda have on leadership in schools? As Sue Barfood indicated - "flat leadership", even flatter than usual notions of administrators and teachers being partners, students organising events, making authentic decisions and suggestions and creating their own learning experiences is on. Organisational charts and heirarchies are gone.

Q. What do traditional approaches to schooling over a period of time do to students ability to solve authentic problems (and think in reality) OR What does KPS approach over a period of time do to students ability to solve authentic problems (and thinkk in reality)?
This is prompted by Bill's anecdote about kids taking 10-15minutes to realise to film an ad in a bar they could actually go to a bar.

Q. How do we understanding or define “knowledge”?
I stumbled across the ideas of declarative and procedural knowledge from Dimensions of Learning earlier this year, but am interested in what others have to say.

Q. How do we understand or define "knowledge creation" and help teachers understand this concept?
I sometimes have a sense that teachers think I too must be from another planet when I talk about this. (Apparently Chris is an alien life form) Some teachers' understanding comes from the perspective that students can't possibly create knowledge Pythagorus discovered the theory and I teach it. Students can't possibly create it, it's already done.

Following from above.. What do we know about the sophistication of student's knowledge work? Is there a continuum from volunteer labour to knowledge worker? Are they different concepts? Are both roles legitimate?
For me the jury is out on this one..needs more thought, reading and exploration. Its an interesting area. I need to understand earlier issues in more depth before I could call this one.

Q. With KPS, is the finished work product of higher quality and why?

Q. How do schools deal with the "ownership" issue? This goes beyond the copyright and intellectual property discussion towards what happens in a school when the culture is such that students can start a project and it becomes bigger than Ben Hur?

Q. How do we enable (give permission to) teachers to...
- continue working/learning beyond the unit boundaries?
- pursuit tangents that enrich the learning and build on the known?
- ensure the end product is achieved despite time pressures?

Q. How do we enable (give permission to) teachers to
- become experts for specific projects and
- build on them from previous years with new cohorts of students not necessarily starting from the beginning?
The wine making course sheds some light on the first part of this question.

Q. How does creating our own community space (ie history project, museum idea) that is potentially an on going context support teachers who work in this mode?
If we can get this sort of concept up and running I will be very interested to see the impact on teachers professional life and student learning outcomes.

Well there is a start. I look forward to the responses of others.
Take care.
Trudy