What was bugging me (as I was being asked to) was how to share it with the pupils. I’ve learned the hard way that the experience of others can point in a new direction, but whether that path is one worth taking, only time will tell…, Increasingly, I’m sceptical about how we think about ‘evidence based practice’. What if this common language was actually creating an illusion of shared understanding? Being able to reflect (asking questions of oneself is a skill) on their own effort and outputs gave them more confidence in the purpose of ‘being at school’ in our culture. SOLO Taxonomy (structure of observed learning outcomes) provides a simple, reliable and robust model for three levels of understanding – surface deep and conceptual (Biggs and Collis 1982). As much as we are used to plug-and-play with our technology, it is clear that we can’t do the same with interventions in the classroom. It’s superficial and pointless. Upgrade to download 0 0. And make no mistake, it is great for getting students to ‘demonstrate progress’; but of what? As a result of this it was possible to highlight many positive effects of using SOLO that were found to be common throughout the literature, although potential issues within the taxonomy were also discovered. What’s worse is that the government had just imposed a system of “everyone must get a C”, just over there it is a “7”. But hey, I know very little about schools …. Change can be complex. It is impossible to differenciate their level of thinking from the quantity of their knowledge. And may not agree with the Didau of tomorrow. To provide empirical support for this claim. The first two are beguiling. You don’t dispute my claim that “…the successful implementation of an intervention is correlated with the implementers quality of knowledge regarding that intervention.” This therefore suggests that we are in agreement. It turned out that Hattie had read my thoughts on SOLO and we managed to find time to have a short discussion, but essentially we left the matter […], […] sound like a lot of extra time spent in the classroom, doesn’t it? I’m not saying Solo (or anything else) doesn’t work. Using the five levels as part of the success criteria by which students are measured (by themselves, peers or teachers). However the reason for me, was to try to get my students to latch onto the idea of relating what I was trying to teach them to something they already knew. I’m also dubious of this: “And with greater Metacognition comes greater motivation to learn.” How do we know that? b) a tool to help students themselves become better at self-regulating their learning, not something to be used prove to observers that they are making visible progress (although I accept it is being sold as this a lot of the time) . For that reason, I think in educational settings, there is value in what Ahmed and Pollitt call the “support model”. Why I changed my mind about the SOLO taxonomy -... Why I changed my mind about the SOLO taxonomy | The Echo Chamber, Pseudo intervention and the power of placebo | David Didau: The Learning Spy, Pseudo intervention and the power of placebo | The Echo Chamber, https://www.learningspy.co.uk/english-gcse/principled-curriculum-design-teach-english/, A pragmatic approach to SOLO | scienceteachblog, https://www.learningspy.co.uk/learning/changed-mind-solo-taxonomy/, (Hans) SOLO | The Dean Academy: Professional Learning, A pragmatic approach to SOLO by @ScienceDouglas | UKEdChat.com - Supporting the #UKEdChat Education Community, Implementing Assessment Without Levels | Teaching: Leading Learning, Why the knowledge/skills debate is worth having | David Didau: The Learning Spy, A pragmatic approach to SOLO by @ScienceDouglas | UKEdChat - Supporting the Education Community, Three Act Science – Alternative approaches to Science Teaching | Neil Atkin, Challenging Bloom’s Taxonomy | David Didau: The Learning Spy, SOLO taxonomy training | David Didau: The Learning Spy, You can keep your magic beans, or why I got over SOLO | MrHistoire, You can keep your magic beans, or why I got over SOLO | MrHistoire.com, The End Of Bloom’s Taxonomy – the middle road, Strategies to improve my teaching – Site Title, On gimmicks | David Didau: The Learning Spy, http://themagicof535.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/to-what-extent-is-didaus-rejection-of.html#!/2017/01/to-what-extent-is-didaus-rejection-of.html, It’s not what you know… oh, hang on: it IS what you know! Has wide applications in business arena, especially in training and development field. That is nonsense. In MFL teaching, the temptation is often to stay at word level for long periods of time. I got somewhat confused (and disheartened somewhat) when I read the blog from Didau when it was first posted. Making an connection between two or more items and speculating based on these ideas could represent a two sentence story written by a 9 year old or a PhD thesis. Set a reminder in your calendar. The SOLO (Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome) taxonomy illustrated in figure 1 (originally Biggs & Collis, 1982) can be used to categorise student responses to open-ended questions. […] I’ve been meaning to write this for quite a while. What is Solo taxonomy? And no student ever said they missed it. Admittedly, when we first begun researching about the taxonomy, we did find it difficult to understand and … Increasingly, I’ve become rather embarrassed about my erstwhile advocacy for Biggs & Collis’s generic taxonomy, the Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes. As you point out elsewhere – data is pretty meaningless, especially without context. Thank you Craig. It provides a framework for creating progressive curricula that gradually increase in difficulty level. While the SOLO taxonomy can help identify levels of progression with learning, Biggs (1999) also identifies characteristics of students that signal whether they are adopting a deep or surface level approach to learning. I’m saying that time spent focusing explicitly on metacognitive strategies/tools that are not subject specific is largely a waste of time. It is hierarchal and each stage involves the previous and adds something to it. Here is […], […] because I’m now able to rationalise my objections. It needs little introduction since heavyweights like Peter DeWitt and Pam Hook have spent some time explaining it. Other skills that are positively influenced by greater student insight through reflection in SOLO are cooperation with others different from ourselves, effective communication, and listening: all skills which I believe are the key life skills to be practiced and learnt by secondary school age children. Can I quote this ‘experiment’ in my new book? If you need any specific help with how you could have reworded your blog, just let me know . What you claim is a refutation is perhaps more a rebuttal or a denial (a denial is what you presented in your original blog regarding why you had changed your mind about SOLO). The very structure of the Taxonomy, moving from the simplest level of knowledge to the most difficult level of evaluation, is not supported by research. They are the assessable ends of education, written from the students’ perspective, focused on what Whilst it’s hilariously flattering to be compared to Henry VIII, the rest of Craig’s blog is snide ad hominem and pretty easy to pick apart. Teachers can incorporate this approach into their lessons by: 1. Using the SOLO categories gives the teacher a way of looking at and interpreting pupil responses and it is this interpretation that then informs the AfL conversation that the teacher has with the pupil. I offer as my comment a study we performed in school on 112 Year 7 Science learners, split into 4 classes, taught by two teachers. For example, in my country, it has only just been introduced! It works very well in Higher Education especially when combined with Meyer & Land’s work on Threshold concepts and of course it shouldn’t really be separated, I don’t think, from constructive alignment. SOLO (Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes) […], […] UK, this taxonomy is well known. Change ), You are commenting using your Twitter account. Do we want to burden students with the background pedagogical rationales – surely this is for the teacher? “Evidence” from surveys or correlational research is not a basis for action.”. Bloom’s taxonomy is an effective tool that teachers and educators can use to create lesson plans and tests in the bid to encourage critical thinking. But if you find it useful to teach pupils about SOLO, then please ignore me , […] more blogs or articles online questioning it. Unlike Bloom’s taxonomy, the verbs in the SOLO taxonomy are all observable, making them ideal for assessments. Yes, I agree, learning as critical thinking is a life-long project, so you won’t see immediate results. Create a free website or blog at WordPress.com. I have found SOLO to be a way to enable constructive alignment to be made manifest at both undergraduate and secondary levels. To put this into an obvious example: One student may write two sentences that show good relational though but another student writes a whole page of multistructural knowledge. Uses for SOLO Taxonomy to … There is, I think, a fair amount of evidence of the usefulness of these concepts in HE but there, the students already have a reasonable grasp of how to remember and understand – or to know where to find out. I am happy to exemplify this improvement if it would be considered to be of any value. A teacher would always do better to know more about the concepts she is trying to teach. Advantages and Disadvantages of Bloom’s Taxonomy 2 Learning occurs in various forms when it comprises performance of ability. I like this post a lot, because I think it’s really helpful to examine and reflect upon what we’ve ditched along the way. (I began exploring this idea here, but James Theobald has written far more eloquently on the matter here.). 3. SOLO isn’t about “prompting students to show they’re able to move from multi-structural to extended abstract in a single lesson”- several lessons might be spent on deepening/broadening the multistructural stage. Some teachers got quite disillusioned because they saw that the model detracts from building a solid knowledge […], […] for example David Didau who at first advocated its use, then changed his mind (as read in his blog) suggesting that the language of the taxonomy was over-complex and there were simpler ways of doing […]. More importantly, there is no empirical foundation for any of its claims. So all we’re left with are his opinions, and despite what Craig may feel, Hattie’s opinions are no more valuable than anyone else’s. Is it being able to generate revolutionary new thinking? SOLO Taxonomy supports teachers to classify learning outcomes in terms of their complexity, enabling teachers to assess students’ work in terms of its quality and depth as opposed to the quantity of items achieved. Although it has received criticism, most notably from David Didau in this post, I believe it has a lot of positive aspects. ( Log Out / If they’ve thought about SOLO taxonomy or exciting mini-plenary activities, these are what they will remember. I think of the extended abstract as what I can do, ie describing my deep understanding of the topic. Perhaps, I need to do further research if I have to, to prepare myself well before making changes to my Assessment Resource Tools for Teaching and Learning. The points you make can all be achieved more efficiently without recourse to telling children about extraneous, generic taxonomies. Sadly, we have to take Craig’s word for it as he’s failed to supply a citation. There’s no question that the way we learn is ‘constructivist’ in that we construct meaning by integrating new information into pre-existing schemas, but this is trivially true; it happens regardless of how we teach.