A teacher's guide to SOLO Taxonomy
Discover the SOLO Taxonomy and learn how it enhances deeper learning outcomes in the classroom, fostering critical thinking and improved student engagement.
What is the SOLO taxonomy?
SOLO (Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes) offers a structured outline for the learners to use to build their learning and thinking. This framework supports SOLO taxonomy and metacognitive development by helping students reflect on their understanding. It motivates students to ponder where they are presently in terms of their level of understanding, and what they must do to progress.
Key Takeaways
- Beyond Bloom's Hierarchy: Why SOLO Taxonomy reveals what students actually understand, not just what they remember, and how this changes your assessment approach
- An Untapped Framework: Many science teachers remain unfamiliar with SOLO: discover this powerful framework transforming how students connect ideas
- From Facts to Thinking: The five SOLO levels that show exactly where each student is stuck and the specific moves to deepen their understanding
- Your Assessment Revolution: How one rubric simultaneously designs questions AND scores answers, revealing the quality of thinking your current methods miss
SOLO Taxonomy was developed by John Biggs and Kevin Collis, two educational researchers who were interested in creating a framework that could help teachers design more effective classroom activities. The framework is based on the idea that there are different levels of understanding, and that students can move through these levels by engaging with increasingly complex tasks and ideas. By using SOLO Taxonomy, teachers can create lessons that are tailored to each student's current level of understanding, and that help them progress towards more sophisticated levels of knowledge.
SOLO Taxonomy is often used in conjunction with the concept of constructive alignment, which is the idea that learning outcomes, teaching activities, and assessment tasks should all be aligned with one another. By aligning these three elements, teachers can ensure that their students are learning in a way that is both meaningful and effective.
With SOLO Taxonomy, teachers can design activities that are aligned with the specific level of understanding that each student has already achieved, and that help them progress towards more advanced levels of understanding. This approach allows students to build on their existing knowledge and skills, and to develop a deeper understanding of the subject matter over time.
How Does SOLO Taxonomy Enhance Student Learning?
SOLO Taxonomy enhances student learning by providing a clear framework that shows students exactly where they are in their understanding and what steps they need to take next. Teachers can use the five SOLO levels to create tailored lessons that match each student's current understanding level and guide them towards more sophisticated thinking. This approach helps students move beyond memorization to develop genuine comprehension and critical thinking skills.
Solo Taxonomy is a systematic way that describes how learners' understanding build from easy to difficult while learning different tasks or subjects. The Solo Taxonomy can be used to enhance the quality of learning within the classroom teaching and provide a systematic way of developing deep understanding (Damopolii, 2020). Student learning can be guided in ways that promote deep learning, much like how scaffolding supports learners through the zone of proximal development.
SOLO Taxonomy is a valuable tool for assessing the depth of knowledge that students have achieved in a particular subject or task. It allows teachers to identify where students are in their learning process and determine what steps need to be taken to move them to a deeper level of understanding.
By using SOLO Taxonomy, teachers can design activities that are appropriate for each student's level of understanding and encourage them to move towards deeper levels of knowledge. This approach works similarly to differentiation strategies and can lead to a more effective and engaging learning experience for students, and ultimately, better academic performance.
What are the Five SOLO Levels?
The Structure of Observed Learning Outcome, presents a compelling way to structure the complexity and quality of students' thinking into distinct levels. Unlike Bloom's hierarchical approach, it's a versatile tool that allows educators to gauge attainment levels and encourage quality learning. This taxonomy consists of five levels, each representing a different depth of knowledge and ability level.
- Prestructural Level: Here, students exhibit a lack of understanding, often missing the point entirely. The level of thinking is minimal, with a focus more on lower-order verbs such as identify, memorize, and recall. This limited processing may be due to cognitive load overwhelming the student's working memory. It's the first stepping stone, a difficulty level that needs overcoming before progressing.
- Unistructural Level: At this stage, students can identify singular aspects of knowledge, and their understanding is limited to isolated disciplinary knowledge. For instance, a student might identify that water boils at 100 degrees Celsius but may not understand why this happens. This level shows the beginning of schema formation.
- Multistructural Level: The quantity of knowledge increases at this level. Students begin to gather multiple pieces of information, but they struggle to relate them coherently. For example, a student in this stage might know the boiling point of water and that heat energy is involved, yet fail to link these facts.
- Relational Level: This is where the magic of student-led learning starts to manifest. Students begin to connect the multistructural elements into a coherent whole. Their level of thinking becomes more complex, and they start to understand the relationships between facts. This connects well with inquiry-based learning approaches and classroom dialogue. For instance, a student at this level would understand that water boils at 100 degrees Celsius due to the increased kinetic energy of water molecules.
- Extended Abstract Level: The zenith of understanding, where students can generalise beyond the given context and apply their knowledge to new, abstract situations. At this level, students demonstrate the highest quality of learning, showing creative and effective thinking. They can take their relational understanding and extend it to hypothetical scenarios or different contexts entirely. For example, a student might understand not only why water boils at 100 degrees Celsius but also predict how altitude or atmospheric pressure would affect this process, or apply these principles to other substances.
Each level builds upon the previous one, creating a natural progression that teachers can use to design learning activities and assess student understanding. The beauty of SOLO Taxonomy lies in its ability to show what students know and how they can use that knowledge to think and reason.
Understanding these five levels allows teachers to identify precisely where each student sits in their learning journey and design targeted interventions to help them progress. Unlike traditional assessment approaches that might simply mark answers as right or wrong, SOLO Taxonomy reveals the quality of thinking behind student responses.
How Can Teachers Implement SOLO Taxonomy in the Classroom?
Teachers can implement SOLO Taxonomy by using the five levels to design learning activities, create assessment rubrics, and provide targeted feedback. Start by identifying which SOLO level your learning objectives target, then design activities that scaffold students through each level systematically. Use SOLO-based questioning techniques and rubrics to assess student understanding and guide them towards deeper thinking.
The practical implementation of SOLO Taxonomy begins with lesson planning. Teachers should design activities that deliberately move students through the levels, starting with tasks that help them grasp single concepts (unistructural) before progressing to activities that require them to handle multiple pieces of information (multistructural). This might involve retrieval practice activities at the lower levels and more complex problem-based learning tasks at higher levels.
Assessment becomes more meaningful when structured around SOLO levels. Rather than simply checking for correct answers, teachers can evaluate the sophistication of student thinking. A student might give a partially correct answer but demonstrate relational thinking, which provides valuable insight into their understanding and suggests specific next steps for learning.
Creating SOLO-based rubrics transforms both teaching and learning. These rubrics make expectations explicit for students whilst providing teachers with a systematic way to evaluate learning outcomes. Students can use these rubrics for self-assessment, helping them understand what deeper thinking looks like in practice. This approach supports the development of metacognitive skills as students become more aware of their own thinking processes.
Questioning strategies should also reflect SOLO levels. Teachers can design question sequences that gradually increase in cognitive demand, moving from simple recall questions through to extended abstract applications. This systematic approach to questioning helps ensure that all students are challenged appropriately whilst being supported to reach higher levels of understanding.
Conclusion
SOLO Taxonomy offers teachers a powerful lens through which to view student learning and understanding. By moving beyond surface-level assessment to examine the quality and structure of student thinking, this framework enables more precise and effective teaching interventions. The five levels provide a roadmap for both teachers and students, making the journey from superficial understanding to deep, transferable knowledge both visible and achievable.
The strength of SOLO Taxonomy lies in its assessment capabilities and in its potential to transform classroom practice. When teachers design lessons with SOLO levels in mind, they create learning experiences that systematically develop student thinking. This approach ensures that students don't just accumulate facts, but develop the cognitive structures necessary for genuine understanding and creative application of knowledge.
As education continues to evolve towards developing critical thinking and problem-solving skills, frameworks like SOLO Taxonomy become increasingly valuable. They provide the scaffolding necessary to support both teachers and students in the complex process of deep learning, ensuring that educational outcomes reflect what students can remember and what they can actually do with their knowledge.
Further Reading
For teachers interested in exploring SOLO Taxonomy and its applications in greater depth, the following research provides valuable insights and evidence-based approaches:
- Biggs, J. B., & Collis, K. F. (1982). Evaluating the Quality of Learning: The SOLO Taxonomy (Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome). Academic Press. This foundational text introduces the theoretical framework and provides comprehensive guidance for implementation across different subject areas.
- Hattie, J., & Brown, G. T. L. (2004). Cognitive processes in asTTle: The SOLO taxonomy. Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning (asTTle) Technical Report, 43. University of Auckland. This research demonstrates practical applications of SOLO Taxonomy in large-scale assessment programmes.
- Chan, C. C., Tsui, M. S., Chan, M. Y. C., & Hong, J. H. (2002). Applying the Structure of the Observed Learning Outcomes (SOLO) taxonomy on student's learning outcomes: An empirical study. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 27(6), 511-527. This empirical study provides evidence for the effectiveness of SOLO Taxonomy in enhancing student learning outcomes.
- Brabrand, C., & Dahl, B. (2009). Using the SOLO taxonomy to analyse competence progression of university science curricula. Higher Education, 58(4), 531-549. This research explores how SOLO Taxonomy can be used to design and evaluate science curricula at university level.
- Pegg, J., & Tall, D. (2005). The fundamental cycle of concept construction underlying various theoretical frameworks. ZDM Mathematics Education, 37(6), 468-475. This paper connects SOLO Taxonomy to broader theories of cognitive development and concept formation in mathematics education.
