As has probably become obvious, Dr. John Hattie's recent time in Grande Prairie has had an impact on all of our thinking about our impacts on student learning. During his keynote, Dr. Hattie brought to light a new way (to me) of looking at student learning and understanding called the SOLO (Structure of Observed Learning Outcomes) Taxonomy. SOLO is a research-based learning taxonomy developed by John Biggs and Kevin Collis.
SOLO can be broken down into two parts, Surface Learning - which contains the Unistructural and Multistructural understanding, and Deep Learning - which contains Relational and Extended Abstract understanding. Surface learning at it's simplest is knowing individual bits of information and moving to knowing many bits of information, being able to define them, list them, or recall them. Deep Learning is being able to draw connections, see relationships or explain cause and effect, and then extend that into applying that understanding and relationship to new or different content/problems.
What was an 'aha' moment for me was the connection to my thinking around Project-based Learning (PBL). In past years, in discussions around PBL, I could be heard talking about putting aside the content and focusing on developing the skills that the students needed to be critical thinkers and to solve problems. Late in the year, I had an epiphany, of course you need the content (or at least some of it). How can you hope to solve problems if you don't even know enough to know that the problem exists. Yes there is a lot of information that can readily be found on line if you need it, i.e. the date WWII started or what triggered the start of WWII; however, you have to know something about WWII to delve deeply into conflict and how it has shaped the world we live in. To effectively delve into this problem, you need to have a surface understanding of conflict and WWII and potentially several other things.
When Hattie discussed SOLO with us, it was a connection, a piece of the surface learning, falling into place. For a student to move deeply into making connections and applying concepts and relationships to new problems, they must have a surface level understanding in that area, and that might involve memorizing the multiplication table so they are readily available, it might be memorizing the phyla of kingdom Animalia. The purpose behind doing these things CANNOT be purely for the purpose of the content and memorization, but instead to be able to connect ideas and solve problems with them. In a world that is changing faster than ever before, we need to prepare our students to be learners and problems solvers. If 90% of what we do and assess is based in the realm of surface learning, are we truly preparing our students or taking them deeper into a subject? Are we teaching students how to be learners who can move from being a novice, firmly grounded in the world of surface understanding, to students who are proficient, able to access deep understanding to solve the problems of tomorrow?
In the end, student learning is what we are all about, it is the reason that we are in the educational roles we are. We desire to see students grow in their understandings and knowledge, to become citizens who are informed, involved and can learn - - - learn anything they want to learn. We want to develop in them the skills necessary to do this and to expose them to surface knowledge that will allow them to find their passions and delve deeply into them to make our world a better place.
- Chris Horton -
Relevant Links:
http://pamhook.com/tools/SelfAssessment.html#slide0
http://www.tedi.uq.edu.au/downloads/Biggs_Solo.pdf
http://www.visible-learning.org
Images From
http://belmontteach.wordpress.com
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Animal_diversity.png
SOLO can be broken down into two parts, Surface Learning - which contains the Unistructural and Multistructural understanding, and Deep Learning - which contains Relational and Extended Abstract understanding. Surface learning at it's simplest is knowing individual bits of information and moving to knowing many bits of information, being able to define them, list them, or recall them. Deep Learning is being able to draw connections, see relationships or explain cause and effect, and then extend that into applying that understanding and relationship to new or different content/problems.
What was an 'aha' moment for me was the connection to my thinking around Project-based Learning (PBL). In past years, in discussions around PBL, I could be heard talking about putting aside the content and focusing on developing the skills that the students needed to be critical thinkers and to solve problems. Late in the year, I had an epiphany, of course you need the content (or at least some of it). How can you hope to solve problems if you don't even know enough to know that the problem exists. Yes there is a lot of information that can readily be found on line if you need it, i.e. the date WWII started or what triggered the start of WWII; however, you have to know something about WWII to delve deeply into conflict and how it has shaped the world we live in. To effectively delve into this problem, you need to have a surface understanding of conflict and WWII and potentially several other things.
When Hattie discussed SOLO with us, it was a connection, a piece of the surface learning, falling into place. For a student to move deeply into making connections and applying concepts and relationships to new problems, they must have a surface level understanding in that area, and that might involve memorizing the multiplication table so they are readily available, it might be memorizing the phyla of kingdom Animalia. The purpose behind doing these things CANNOT be purely for the purpose of the content and memorization, but instead to be able to connect ideas and solve problems with them. In a world that is changing faster than ever before, we need to prepare our students to be learners and problems solvers. If 90% of what we do and assess is based in the realm of surface learning, are we truly preparing our students or taking them deeper into a subject? Are we teaching students how to be learners who can move from being a novice, firmly grounded in the world of surface understanding, to students who are proficient, able to access deep understanding to solve the problems of tomorrow?
In the end, student learning is what we are all about, it is the reason that we are in the educational roles we are. We desire to see students grow in their understandings and knowledge, to become citizens who are informed, involved and can learn - - - learn anything they want to learn. We want to develop in them the skills necessary to do this and to expose them to surface knowledge that will allow them to find their passions and delve deeply into them to make our world a better place.
- Chris Horton -
Relevant Links:
http://pamhook.com/tools/SelfAssessment.html#slide0
http://www.tedi.uq.edu.au/downloads/Biggs_Solo.pdf
http://www.visible-learning.org
Images From
http://belmontteach.wordpress.com
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/14/Animal_diversity.png