What if this common language was actually creating an illusion of shared understanding? What if we were using the same words to describe fundamentally different things? What if the time spent teaching pupils to understand what ‘extended abstract’ might mean in English, history, maths, PE and art could be spent developing domain specific language that might be tailored to separated subject disciplines? I started to feel that SOLO was swamping the disciplinary ‘what’ with the pedagogic ‘how’ and that this resulted at best in wasting time and at worst in confusion. Teaching children a new cross curricular language of learning assumes that the terms we use mean the same things at different times and in different places. True extended abstract thinking can only develop over time.īut what about the importance of the shared understanding and common language of learning? If teaching children to use SOLO to identify their leaps from one stage on the ladder to another was artificial and superficial, did this at least provide a saving grace? Much to my chagrin, I decided it did not. All this might demonstrate is the progress they’ve made in their ability to perform a particular task at a particular time. And make no mistake, it is great for getting students to ‘demonstrate progress’ but of what? If I accept that learning takes time and needs to build on a firm foundation of knowledge, then there really isn’t any value in prompting students to show they’re able to move from multi-structural to extended abstract in a single lesson. Much of the time I had invested into teaching the taxonomy was based on the flawed belief that it would help students demonstrate progress. Once I’d been introduced to the idea that we should disassociate ‘performance’ from ‘learning’ the whole idea of making progress in individual lessons collapsed. And if this sounds blindingly obvious to you, I can only hang my head in shame.įrom there I started to consider whether I might have made other erroneous assumptions.įirst to go was the idea it possible to see progress in lessons. Finally, the penny dropped teaching pupils how to analyse in isolation is pretty pointless. The only difference is the quality and quantity of what they know. I noticed that pupils are asked to make relational connections and abstract constructions at every Key Stage and beyond. This observation led to the realisation that the usefulness of SOLO was entirely dependent on the quality of the knowledge pupils possessed. But aren’t they utterly dependent on the depth and breadth of what you know? What happens if you make a relational construct which is wrong? The answer, of course, is to go back to our store of knowledge and correct the misapprehension. These applications of ‘cleverness’ seem self-evidently and obviously true: of course we want these things. Or is it the quality and quantity of what you know?.Is it seeing links and connections between different concepts and ideas?.Is it being able to generate revolutionary new thinking?.There was always the annoying niggle that there isn’t really any evidence that using SOLO levels in lessons achieves any of the claims made for it, but what the hell it worked for me and my students.īut as time went by, I started noticing problems.Ĭonsider this question: What makes you clever? It made students’ progress from ‘just knowing’ facts to seeing connections very visible.It could help develop a common understanding and shared language of learning.Of the many benefits of using SOLO, the two I was most excited about were these:
And there is no one more zealous than a convert I wanted to spread the word. Exciting possibilities about how I might design lessons to encourage pupils to respond in new and surprising ways were opening up before me. The vocabulary of SOLO felt like a revelation.
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