The knowledge organisation hierarchy model can be used to understand how knowledge is structured hierarchically and how to approach the structuring of content.
Part 1 of this series, an introduction to the concept of knowledge structures, can be found here.
Summary
Scope of the article: The article explains the model of the knowledge organisation hierarchy in relation to non-fiction books.
Why the model is useful: I find the model useful because it helps me to understand and develop the overall structure of the content I’m working on. This in turn makes it easier to organise the detail.
Context: The knowledge organisation hierarchy doesn’t exist on its own. Decisions on the organisation of content are meaningless without understanding the broader context within which they are being made. This context includes the goals of the author and the target audience, and the learning model being used.
Knowledge organisation hierarchy model: The model is made up of organising and supporting knowledge structures.
1. Organising knowledge structures: These define the main aspects of the content and organise all the detail that is to be included.
There are four categories of organising knowledge structure:
- core knowledge structures
- theme/framework
- content structure
- content sequences.
2. Supporting knowledge structures: These make up the detailed content of a book and are organised around its planned structure.
As the name suggests, they provide support for the core knowledge structure(s) by, for example:
- giving additional detail
- defining and explaining concepts
- explaining changes through timelines
- bringing life to ideas by telling stories
- making the implementation of processes more concrete by providing concrete examples
- classifying concepts into different categories to simplify and order the content
- using metaphors and analogies to show the similarities between new knowledge and what the reader already knows.
I’ll be looking deeper into many of the topics discussed here in upcoming articles.
Scope of the article
This article explains the model of the knowledge organisation hierarchy in relation to non-fiction books. However the model is also relevant to other categories of content. The article is best read in conjunction with my article on the concept of microstructures and macrostructures.
Why the knowledge organisation hierarchy model is useful
I find the model useful because it helps me to understand and develop the overall structure of the content I’m working on, which then makes it easier to organise the detail. In particular:
- it helps me focus on the importance of understanding the hierarchical organisation of knowledge in order to communicate more effectively
- being clear about the nature of the particular core knowledge structure(s) being used at the top of the hierarchy makes decisions about the rest of the content easier
- working on the four organising knowledge structures allows me to address key structural issues which then reduces the danger of being overwhelmed by unorganised detail.
Context
Authors make decisions about the structure of their content within a wider context.
This can be illustrated with the methodology I use when I work with non-fiction authors.
I believe it’s premature to spend much time on the structure of any content before:
- firstly, defining the key parameters around which the book is to be organised. This involves getting clear about:
- the ideas that are to be communicated
- the author’s goals
- the identity of the specific audience to be addressed and their goals and needs
- how the book will be different from competing books
- and secondly, developing a strategy explaining how the content can be constructed to ensure engagement and learning.
It’s important to realise that working on structure is an ongoing process. Of course, writers start off with an initial plan of the structure. However this plan is continually subject to revision throughout the writing and editing stages as issues arise that need to be addressed.
Knowledge organisation hierarchy
I’ve developed the knowledge organisation hierarchy as a model for understanding the hierarchical organisation of knowledge.
The hierarchy organises the 19 different knowledge structures that I described in a previous article. It is made up of two main categories:
- organising knowledge structures, which define the main aspects of the content and take into account the key parameters and strategy that have already been decided on
- supporting knowledge structures, which make up the detailed content of a book organised around its planned structure.
1. Organising knowledge structures
The organising knowledge structures consist of four categories.
1.1 Core knowledge structures
The core knowledge structure describes the overall nature of a book.
There are six main knowledge structures that are most commonly used as core structures, either on their own or in combination.
They are:
- Argument
- Process
- System
- Story/narrative
- Explanation
- Description.
Argument knowledge structure
Books that have an argument at their core aim to persuade readers of a particular case.
This might include persuading them about:
- the correctness of a particular historical interpretation
- the need to support a particular social policy
- the benefits of following a particular business strategy.
The argument is a very common core knowledge structure for non-fiction books. I will be writing a further article giving some examples of the innovative use of this knowledge structure.
Process or system knowledge structure
Skill development books tend to have either a process or a system at their heart since developing a new skill involves learning new processes or systems.
However, these books will often include an important argument element. Readers need to be persuaded not just about the benefits a particular skill can bring but also why the author’s recommended process or system is going to get results.
Story/narrative knowledge structure
History books will often have a story or a narrative at their core. Some self-development books that focus heavily on the author’s personal experience, such as Tim Ferriss’s The 4-Hour Work Week will also use story as a core knowledge structure.
Explanation knowledge structure
Books centred around the explanation knowledge structure will often be introducing learners to new areas such as economics, art, philosophy or architecture. The aim is not to persuade readers of a new interpretation (that would be using an argument knowledge structure) but rather to provide readers with an introduction to foundational ideas, concepts and examples.
Description knowledge structure
Books focused on the description knowledge structure include travelogues and some books on history. The core of this type of book is the reporting of details about people, places, events or experiences in the past, present or projected future.
Books covering the same general topic can focus on different core knowledge structures. For example, a book about the 2nd World War might have as its core structure:
- an argument (eg. the causes of the war)
- a story/narrative (eg. an account of events during the war)
- a description (eg. what life was like in occupied France).
There are a small number of books that use other core knowledge structures. For example, The Timeline of World History by Matt Baker and John Andrews, as the name suggests, uses timelines as the core knowledge structure.
1.2 Theme/framework
The theme of a book is the metaphor, concept, fact or story around which it is organised.
It’s not essential that non-fiction books have a theme but a well-chosen one can be very effective at making a book’s content more coherent and encapsulating the essence of its message.
This is certainly the case for Blue Ocean Strategy and Blue Ocean Shift, two popular business books written by W. Chan Kim and Renée A. Mauborgne. The authors developed two contrasting metaphors: the ‘blue ocean’ as uncontested market space and the ‘red ocean’ as fiercely contested market space. They then used them to underpin the meaning of each book.
Part of the success of these books can be put down to the colourfulness and simplicity of these metaphors.
Another example of a theme is Oliver Burkeman’s use of the fact that humans live, on average, for four thousand weeks in his book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals.
This fact provides a device to unify the disparate content of the book and encourage readers to look at time management and their lives in a different and more productive way.
A further example is psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist, who uses the ancient story of the master and his emissary in his book of the same name to express the core idea of his book.
The master trains an emissary to share the burden of his work but then finds himself overthrown by the emissary. McGilchrist suggests that the story can serve as an analogy for changes in the relationship between the right hemisphere of the brain and the left hemisphere.
Themes can also be used for chapters as well as whole books. For example, psychotherapist Bill O’Hanlon uses the metaphor of ‘rising above yourself’ to organise the meaning of his chapter on spirituality in his book Do One Thing Different.
Frameworks are slightly different to themes in that they are normally created by an author to organise the content of the book. One example is Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People in which the book is structured around the author’s framework of seven key habits.
The essence of a good theme or framework is the ability to draw complex content together in a useful, interesting or meaningful way.
1.3 Content structure
There are two aspects to content structure:
- the time-consuming process of constructing an initial plan for the book structure and then having to regularly modify it across both micro and macro levels as inconsistencies, gaps and contradictions emerge in both writing and editing stages
- how the structure of the content is described to the reader in the final version of the book.
I’m just going to briefly look at the latter aspect here.
Many non-fiction books are quite cognitively complex. Multiple ideas are joined together to create a complicated whole that is often hard to work out, especially for readers who don’t have a great deal of relevant background knowledge.
I don’t believe that the way that the content structure is explained in most non-fiction books at the moment — through table of contents pages at the beginning of the book and a description of the content structure in the introduction — is adequate.
Table of contents pages are, in effect, a list structure – a vertical listing of sections and chapters in appearance order. This is unable to visually show the nature of the relationship between different chapters. This means that the exact nature of these relationships is often not clear to the reader.
The textual description of the content structure in the Introduction is often not highlighted in any way, which makes it too easy for readers to pass over it without realising its importance. In addition, readers aren’t encouraged to re-visit this description if they ever feel they are lost in the detail of the book.
All this means that many readers end up struggling to work out how the different parts of the book fit together.
I believe that it’s beneficial to provide a visual map of the content structure along with a textual description. The relationships between and within chapters are often easier to understand in a visual form while the textual description can provide additional detail.
I’m going examine this point in more detail in a future article. I’ll also be providing some innovative examples of visual depictions of content structures from particular books.
1.4 Content sequences
One of the most important decisions authors have to make is how they are going to sequence their content.
A useful way of understanding sequencing is to through the concept of concept attribute pairs. There are a number of sets of contrasting content attributes which define the relationship of paragraphs or sections to other paragraphs or sections and which I call content attribute pairs.
Here are seven of the most important pairs.
1. SUMMARY—DETAIL
2. WHOLE—PARTS
3. SIMPLE—COMPLEX
4. ABSTRACT—CONCRETE
5. CORE KNOWLEDGE—PERIPHERAL KNOWLEDGE
6. WIDER CONTEXT—NARROWER FOCUS
7. MACRO-MICRO
There are two ways in which these pairs can be used to sequence material:
- going from one pole to another in the course of a book. eg. from simple to complex or from concrete to abstract
- zigzagging between the poles multiple times eg. going from summary to detail and then back to summary and on to detail.
It can be helpful for authors to go through each of the pairs to see which are most relevant for their content and then to check if they are ignoring or under-emphasising a particular pole.
I will be looking at content sequencing in more detail in a further article.
2. Supporting knowledge structures
Supporting knowledge structures are the subsidiary knowledge structures discussed in the Introduction to Knowledge Structures article. As the name suggests, they provide support for the core knowledge structure(s) by, for example:
- giving additional detail
- defining and explaining concepts
- explaining changes through timelines
- bringing life to ideas by telling stories
- making the implementation of processes more concrete by providing concrete examples
- classifying concepts into different categories to simplify and order the content
- using metaphors and analogies to show the similarities between new knowledge and what the reader already knows.
The whole point of supporting knowledge structures is that authors should connect them coherently so these subsidiary structures provide effective support to the core knowledge structure(s).
Authors can vary in the number of different knowledge structures they use. It can be helpful for authors to use this list as a checklist, identify the knowledge structures they haven’t used and then decide if they could use any of the missing structures effectively.
Conclusion
The knowledge organisation hierarchy can be used as a practical tool to highlight the options non-fiction authors have in structuring their books and to help them approach working on their book structure in a systematic way.
FURTHER READING
The knowledge organisation hierarchy model is best understood in conjunction with the concept of macrostructures and microstructures, which you can read about here.
Part 1 of this series, an introduction to the concept of knowledge structures, can be found here.