As an independent consultant I have the privilege of observing lessons in a wide range of schools across all ages and all subjects. This has given me a significant insight into the challenges facing teachers today. Faced with an ever-rising expectation of pupil outcomes and an increasingly complex pupil cohort, teachers are having to work harder than ever. However, that hard work has not consistently resulted in sufficiently improved outcomes for pupils, particularly in subjects where depth of understanding rather than acquisition of knowledge is required.
Schools may be scoring highly in phonics or SPAG, where knowledge acquisition is key, but less so in reading, where depth of understanding and the ability to use higher order thinking is required to achieve greater depth. Mathematical knowledge and skills are learned but concepts are not always retained, resulting in frequent revisiting to ensure that pupils can apply their learning, with teachers expressing frustration with situations where pupils could do something last term that now eludes them.
As with so much in education, these are dilemmas that have been facing teachers for decades and we need to look to theoretical research into teaching approaches that have been shown to have efficacy and in particular those that focus on deepening understanding and securing knowledge. SOLO Taxonomy – the Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes – is a taxonomy that describes the stages of learning and provides a conceptual structure that enables teachers to plan for progressive learning – moving from shallow to deep learning as cited by Hattie in his meta-analysis of interventions to raise achievement (Hattie, 2009).
Understanding Solo Taxonomy
The Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO) describes levels of progressive understanding, through five stages that are relevant to all subjects and areas of learning. In SOLO, understanding is considered as an increase in the number and complexity of connections students make as they progress from ignorance to expertise. Each level is intended to encompass and exceed the previous level. The SOLO taxonomy was created by carefully analysing student responses to assessment tasks (Biggs and Collis, 1982; Collis and Biggs, 1986). In developing SOLO, Biggs and Collis took into account many factors that affect student learning, such as students’ prior knowledge and misconceptions, motives and intentions regarding education, and their learning strategies. The result is a view of learning that has both quantitative and qualitative dimensions and applies to all ages and all subjects.
The first level of SOLO (pre-structural) is a stage of ignorance that exists outside of the taxonomy. The next two stages (unistructural and multi-structural) are both levels of surface understanding or quantitative knowledge, in which knowledge is gained in greater quantity but does not result in depth of learning. Depth comes with qualitative knowledge - how ideas are understood in connection with other ideas. These connections enable the learner to move to an increasing abstraction, so the last two levels of SOLO are identified by the integration and connection of knowledge and by increased abstraction. Such fundamental change is cognitively challenging but we need to understand that depth is not the same as difficulty – a confusion that means that teachers find it difficult to pose higher order questions.