Peg Hoey describes Kunskapsskolan Education, an international school model based in Sweden and now in the U.S.
As the world becomes increasingly complex and interconnected, new opportunities open for our children every day. To gain access to all that the world has to offer — education, social connections and careers – they need to have the curiosity, courage, stamina and resilience to recognize opportunity and turn it into their futures.
Since 2000, when our first school opened in Sweden, Kunskapsskolan Education (KED) has continuously redeveloped its model of personalized education to meet this demand by providing the supports, resources and tools for students to discover that they can learn from anything – that there is always a way around – given the right mindset and educational foundation.
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Our core values drive our approach to personalized education:
- All people are different
- We have clear goals and challenging requirements
- Education is for life
- Life is what I make it
The KED model provides the foundation for a personalized, empowered education. Since “all people are different,” we focus on each student as an individual. Every student has a base coach who meets with her in a base group twice a day in addition to engaging in a 1:1 coaching session each week. The focus of this session is to look back on what worked well and what needs revision as the student and coach reflect on what strategies the student employed in meeting her goals. Over time – for some students, a little and for others, a lot – students build their personal backpack of strategies that work for them, from where and when to study to whom and with what to study. Our students build a constructive attitude towards learning to pull out of that backpack when the world gets tough or confusing.
Different people have different goals. For students to achieve academically and socially more than they think possible, those goals must be clear, challenging and reasonable. First, the goals should be clear: Everyone working with the student should be able to understand the goals so we can work together to make sure the student is more than successful.
Goals in our schools are unabashedly tied to academics and flow backwards and forwards to the quality and quantity of knowledge the student wants to achieve by the time she leaves our school. Goals must be challenging and represent an enticing stretch for the student, and at the same time, the goal must be reasonable – something that the student can achieve in a time span that she can grasp and that is in line with her abilities.
In addition to goal setting, strategy experimentation, and coaching, we provide the student with an integrated set of tools so that personalization can happen:
- We use time as a resource by organizing it into different teaching and learning sessions so that students and teachers can use it most efficiently. Students attend labs (inquiry-based sessions), workshops (time to work with subject teacher support), lectures (short, intensive presentations to a group), communication sessions (oral dialogue) and seminars (structured discussions to deepen understanding). Students’ schedules are a mix of compulsory and non-compulsory sessions that they chose to meet their academic goals.
- Our teachers have three different roles: As base coaches, subject teachers and general teachers. As a base coach, they are students’ guides and facilitators. As a subject teacher, they are responsible for students’ mastery over their content area; as a general teacher, they help and are role models to all students.
- Our Steps and Themes curriculum is housed in the Learning Portal™, which can be accessed 24/7. Our subjects meet students where they currently are in their knowledge development, and they organized around authentic projects that where students prove mastery over the content. In Steps (ELA, Math, Spanish) students progress at their own pace. In Themes, students study the humanities through multidisciplinary themes with their grade cohorts.
- We use space differently. Our walls are transparent so that everyone can be seen, which creates safety, collaboration, and creativity. Wasted space is kept to a minimum, since all spaces are learning spaces.
KED is now educating students in three countries – the U.K., Sweden, and the U.S.; our first school in India opens in 2013. To leverage this global field of practice, we have co-developed core manuals, performance management tools, and a KED teacher certification path. Our network-wide working groups in special education, math, and curriculum meet monthly via Skype. The KED common maps and language stimulate innovation and collaboration among our thousands of students and teachers: Since they can “speak” to each other, they can share best practices, plans, and exemplar work.
Our first Skype session between a 6th grader at Innovate Manhattan and a 6th grader in Stockholm showed students’ joy when they discover that someone so far away is learning in a shared model. Daniel offered to help Wilma in math, and they devised a plan to take a field trip to India to introduce students to the KED program. The fact that they saw these plans as possible and doable – their empowerment – is why we do what we do.
About the author
Peg (Margaret) Hoey has been involved in education reform since the early 1990s. Two years ago, she was tapped by Kunskapsskolan International to direct the charter application for Innovate Manhattan Charter School in New York City, the first U.S. school to partner with Kunskapsskolan. In December 2010, Hoey was appointed president of Kunskapsskolan USA.
IKEA meets Montessori? If something sounds too good to be true… http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/sep/10/sweden-free-schools-experiment Where is the research?
I did find this: “Main results are that issues of comprehensiveness and equity are at risk in radical self‐regulated teaching.” From, “Re‐Interpreting Teaching: A Divided Task in Self‐Regulated Teaching Practices,” Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research Volume 53, Issue 1, 2009. And, “However, critiques have also emerged including a call for strengthened regulations of and control over independent schools and concern about an education market equated more with shares and profits rather than pedagogy and student citizenship.” From, “Privatisation of public education? The emergence of independent upper secondary schools in Sweden,” Journal of Education Policy Volume 26, Issue 2, 2011.
“However, we do not find any impact on medium or long-term educational outcomes such as high school GPA, university attainment or years of schooling.” In, Does School Privatization Improve Educational Achievement? Evidence from Sweden’s Voucher Reform, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Research Paper Series, 2008. “The findings indicate that the traditional position of teachers—a position that must negotiate the tension between the logic of the profession and the logic of the bureaucracy—is now in fact challenged by the logic of the market. This study argues that values linked to the logic of the market are imposed on the teachers, and these market values clash with the teachers’ values, values based on the logic of the profession.” Teachers’ Experiences with School Choice: Clashing Logics in the Swedish Education System, Education Research International Volume 2011 (2011).
Jeffrey, though I am also a skeptic, it seems to me a lot of the arguments against KED parallel arguments against charters, competition, and privatization in the U.S.
The linked article includes a complaint that some students enter college with gaps in knowledge after experiencing a KED education. In the U.S. where there is little personalization and a giant push toward standards (all students should study and know and be able to do the same things) colleges complain that MOST students enter college with gaps in knowledge.
I believe there is something to be said about the motivation that is lost when all students must learn the same content and skills and aim at specific, universal benchmarks with little, if any, real choice before maybe the middle of high school. Perhaps this leads to more gaps in knowledge than would occur in a more personalized and seemingly random approach wherein students maybe learn fewer things, but learn them well, because they are empowered from a much younger age to pursue that which drives their curiosity and motivation.
The KED model/approach is not something I had heard or read much about prior to this post. What strikes me is not so much the nitty gritty details of the model, but the core values: “all people are different,” “we have clear goals and challenging requirements,” “education is for life,” and “life is what I make it.” These seem to be values that transcend the KED model and that could provide a vision/guiding compass for many traditional public schools. Aren’t some or all of these values what most teachers want for their students?
The focus on individualization and personalizing education to meet a range of interests and needs is also compelling as we continue public policy debates about how detrimental “one-size-fits-all” models imposed on diverse communities of learners can be. With all of the recent rhetoric about 21st Century thinking and learning and the focus on creativity, collaboration, communication and critical thinking, individualized and personal learning experiences seem to be a real need in our public education system. However, I don’t think that the CCSS (Common Core) and individualized learning goals were meant to be polarized ends of a limitless continuum. Rather, how can we begin to think about how these two goals (common standards/benchmarks for all and individualized learning) can work together to meet students’ needs?
How can we learn from a variety of learning models and approaches vs. compartmentalizing models and approaches as public vs. charter, private vs. public, etc.?
It is an interesting converation as to what should be expected from all students. Colleges tell us that they are more concerned that students be able to access and apply knowledge and skills than they are concerned with specific content (see Conley’s College Knowledge book). There is a call from colleges that high school students do less fiction reading and more expository reading. Many middle and high school students, given the choice, avoid non-fiction and technical reading for the more engaging fiction genre.
We know from research that teen brains are not fully developed to the point that they can make “wise” decisions. So, as with most educational issues, it takes a measured and balanced apporoach to make improvements. I have no problem with universal benchmarks as long as they are not scafolded to the point that it squeezes out time for strategies that allow students to engage with them.
“…it seems to me a lot of the arguments against KED parallel arguments against charters, competition, and privatization in the U.S.” Yes, Kevin, that is part of the point I wanted to make. In a not perfect, but much better world, KED might work for more than a small minority of motivated children and parents. Bottom line: it’s a business first, a school second. It’s fine as a niche school but our current reform movement will never, ever accept such an approach to schooling. Even a Finland public school approach seems too much for our country to deal with.
And Kevin, let’s distinguish between everyone learning the same content and everyone learning the same way. In physics, there is only one content, right? How we get there is and should be a creative process. KED just seems to go way too far into forcing children to put together their own education with minimal adult interaction.
Jessica, there are about a million alternative approaches/ideas/experiments to the traditional school out there that seem to work. From Waldorf (on the wacky end) to Montessori to Core Knowledge and all manner of approaches in between, it’s no secret that promoting student efficacy in their own education is a good thing. Personalizing the curriculum is also a no-brainer. Research supports these notions. But research does not support KED; all we have are a bunch of people saying its obviously good, taking some tested notions about efficacy and personalization, and putting it together in a blended school and hoping it will work. And making a profit. “With all of the recent rhetoric about 21st Century thinking…” Maybe that’s all it is–rhetoric.
“Rather, how can we begin to think about how these two goals (common standards/benchmarks for all and individualized learning) can work together to meet students’ needs?” Experienced, skilled teachers have always taken this approach, don’t you think? Every generation thinks its kids are failing and every generation reinvents the wheel of educational reform, without which, the nation will surely fail. Despite the best efforts of this generation’s latest incarnation of Chicken Little, the nation is still prosperous and strong.
Seems to me, Dewey had a lot of the answers we have now, long ignored.
I worked at one of the Kunskapsskolan ‘schools’ in the UK. The academic results went down and behaviour worsened. It has received a notice to improve:
http://www.ipswichstar.co.uk/news/ipswich_academy_received_warning_letter_over_poor_performance_1_1941579
All of the schools that Kunskapsskolan has opened in the UK have an incredible turn-over in teachers.
As for the ‘Portal’ that she talks about; it was not up and running properly until well after they took over many of the schools in the UK. Most pupils detest it and few use it. It is anything but pupil friendly and consists of little more than links to the work of others. Anyone with decent web design skills could produce something better in a few months, Why they trademark it is anybody’s guess.
If anyone is thinking of sending their child to a Kunskapsskolan school or otherwise getting involved with them ask to have a look at the Portal first.
As for combining Food Technology (Cookery), Design Technology, History, Geography and Religious Education all into a single ‘Theme’ the results could be described as laughable were not the resultant de-education of youngsters such a serious thing. The ‘Themes’ lessons (well, they called them ‘workshops’ or ‘lectures’ ..) that I witnessed consisted of kids sitting bored whilst a video was played, or groups making posters. I witnessed next to no written work.