It is now over twenty years since the US Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, made his infamous observation in a Pentagon Briefing that there were three dimensions to his country’s state of knowledge in relation to Iraq, terrorists and weapons of mass destruction. In February 2002, he spoke of – and defined – “known knowns”, “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns”. Rumsfeld’s comments were ridiculed at the time by commentators who believed them to be at best esoteric and at worst nonsensical. The BBC reported that they “left observers baffled”. In truth, however, the distinctions not only make sense; they are also useful to us in schools. Once reworked in our context, they provide a means by which we can help youngsters progress when tackling an independent learning assignment. This article returns to Rumsfeld’s words and explores how we may interpret each of the three elements in ways that benefit our students.  

Strand One: “Known Knowns” – There are things we know we know.

Various information literacy frameworks start from the perspective that, before they undertake any investigation, students need to consider what they already know. Dubber takes this line in his “progressive finding out steps” for use by primary schoolers. Learners may divide strand one territory into three parts: 

• facts about what they must do for the assignment; 
• information about the subject itself; 
• understanding they have gained from past experience or instruction with respect to investigative methods, e.g. skills they can employ, tools/sources they can exploit and practices that should be followed. 

The importance of the second aspect is emphasised by Wray and Lewis in their Extending Interactions with Text (or EXIT) model. Whilst the second and third areas bulleted above will demand reflection on the child’s part, the first is more straightforward and can simply be extracted from a written brief or recalled from orally delivered instructions. These are likely to stipulate, for example, that the end product must take a prescribed form and be submitted by a certain date.  

Strand Two: “Known Unknowns” – We know they’re some things we do not know.

Within a student project, “known unknowns” refer to what will be learnt in response to the individual’s overall research question and the particular foci they have chosen to cover. The individual’s decisions in these areas will be informed by the “known knowns”. Let us imagine that the youngster has been asked to undertake a study on any topic they wish. They will use what they know already about a subject of interest to help them arrive at their research question, with the ensuing work being directed at defined aspects. Again drawing on their past experience, they will set boundaries for the investigation in such a way that it is viable in terms of the time required, likely resources available, etc.  

Strand Three: “Unknown Unknowns” – There are things we don’t know we don’t know. 

In many student projects, it is impossible to identify in advance all the areas that will be embraced in the information-finding stage. Only with time and investigation will it become apparent that certain issues – not hitherto regarded as relevant by the child – must be examined. These would have been “unknown unknowns” at the start of the study but become increasingly obvious over its course, probably when the “known unknowns” are being tackled. Their discovery will alert the student to the importance of being flexible when planning their work. Nevertheless, some pertinent matters may remain unknown to the child throughout the project and they will not realise their relevance until they receive the teacher’s final feedback.  

Strengths and Weaknesses 

My experience helping students with research at various levels has revealed that an approach based on the three-strand breakdown can be used effectively with youngsters ranging in age from older primary schoolers to Sixth Formers. It is systematic and builds progressively. In an overall narrative that we can present to students, we may say that, in building the foundations of our project on known knowns, we nominate known unknowns for coverage. The course of our investigations leads us to identify what had been unknown unknowns, and our final work shows our understanding of all these elements. 

As well as helping students to think in abstractions, the model may inform part of a metacognitive reviewing stage once the project has been completed. Specifically, students may be encouraged to identify within their final work 

• facts, ideas and so on that they knew at the outset (and were some of the “known knowns”); 
• content on aspects they understood at the beginning would have to be researched (and were originally “known unknowns”); 
• material on areas that fell outside the student’s foci for consideration until they were discovered to be important during the information-finding phase (and were initially “unknown unknowns”). 

Although Rumsfeld makes no mention of them in his briefing, it is appropriate to acknowledge at this point the existence of Zizek’s “unknown knowns”, i.e. ideas and practices “we pretend not to know about” despite the fact that “they form the background of our public values”. In an independent learning context, “unknown knowns” may be matters the student realises are relevant and then chooses to ignore and they go unexplored. Consequently, the full nature and extent of their impact on the subject under examination remains a mystery to the individual. Some may have started as “unknown unknowns” before they emerge as issues of significance in the information-finding phase but even then they are dismissed as too inconvenient or problematic to follow-up.

Since the model featured here is one of good academic practice and “unknown knowns” are often associated with confirmation bias or laziness, they are not included in the framework. They could, however, form an additional focus in the reflective review. The model is limited by the starkness of the pigeon-holing and the dichotomous representation of the basic concepts – information is simply deemed to be known or it is not. The true situation may be different in terms of strand one, especially. A student can be convinced of the accuracy of their knowledge on a subject matter when they are actually under a misapprehension. This is a possibility that the model does not accommodate. We may expect such errors to be quickly resolved when the learner reads more widely or conversations with others alert them to their misunderstandings. No schema for thinking can be entirely comprehensive, of course, and when educating young children, particularly, we inevitably adopt models that would be considered simplistic if applied to adults. Still, in providing a generic framework and enabling students to appreciate factors that should be considered in order to tackle an independent learning assignment effectively, what has been proposed here has much to commend it.