SOLO taxonomy |
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The SOLO taxonomy stands for: Structure of It was developed by Biggs and Collis (1982), and is well described in Biggs (1999) |
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It describes level of increasing complexity in a student's understanding of a subject, through five stages, and it is claimed to be applicable to any subject area. Not all students get through all five stages, of course, and indeed not all teaching (and even less "training" is designed to take them all the way). |
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There are fairly clear links not only with Säljö on conceptions of learning, but also, in the emphasis on making connections and contextualising, with Bateson's levels of learning, and even with Bloom's taxonomy in the cognitive domain. Like my pyramidal representation of Bloom, the assumption is that each level embraces previous levels, but adds something more: |
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1 Pre-structural: here students are simply acquiring bits of unconnected information, which have no organisation and make no sense. |
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2 Unistructural: simple and obvious connections are made, but their significance is not grasped. |
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3 Multistructural: a number of connections may be made, but the meta-connections between them are missed, as is their significance for the whole. |
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4 Relational level: the student is now able to appreciate the significance of the parts in relation to the whole. |
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5 At the extended abstract level, the student is making connections not only within the given subject area, but also beyond it, able to generalise and transfer the principles and ideas underlying the specific instance. |
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I confess to a slight distrust of this kind of "progressive"
model, which aspires inexorably to a final state. I am not
convinced that every subject area fits the model, but nevertheless
it is quite a good guide, and gives some idea of the place
of the Gestalt insight (at the
fourth, relational level). What it does not deal with is
the student who establishes a relational construct which
is nevertheless wrong, and those who pursue wild geese at
the extended abstract level because they are insufficiently
informed at more modest levels. See Umberto Eco's "Foucault's
Pendulum".
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ATHERTON J S (2005) Learning and Teaching: [On-line] UK: Available: Accessed:
Original material © James Atherton: last up-dated 15 August, 2005