Solo Taxonomy

There is a difference between knowing one fact, and knowing how facts fit together, and it is not a difference of quantity.

When somebody begins learning a new subject, their first encounter tends to be with scattered pieces. A few names. A few dates. A few isolated concepts. They have some pieces but no map, and if you ask them to explain the subject, they will produce a list rather than a story. A little later, they have more pieces, and they can produce a longer list, but it is still a list. At some point, and this is the big transition, the pieces start to connect to each other. They begin to see how one idea depends on another, how a concept in one part of the subject illuminates a problem in another part, how the whole thing has a structure rather than just an inventory. Later still, they can stand back and compare the whole structure to another one, transferring insights between domains.

Two researchers named Biggs and Collis worked out this progression in the 1980s and called it the SOLO taxonomy, for Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome. It has five levels. Pre-structural, where the learner has nothing useful. Uni-structural, where they have one relevant piece. Multi-structural, where they have many pieces but no connections. Relational, where the pieces connect into a structure. And extended abstract, where the structure transfers to new domains. The point of the framework is that moving up these levels is not a matter of adding more content. It is a matter of reorganising what the learner already has. Most teaching is optimised for the first three levels, because they are easy to measure. The last two are where real expertise lives, and they are almost never explicitly taught. When you understood a subject well enough to use it in a new context for the first time, what happened in your head that was different from what was happening before?

Last week we mapped the move from scattered facts to a connected understanding. This week we look at the nine quiet things every good teacher does to help that move happen.