John Biggs

Book Review: Using SOLO Taxonomy to Think Like a Scientist

September 19, 2017

The New Zealand Science Teacher has just published a fabulous review of Using SOLO Taxonomy to Think Like a Scientist: How to develop curious minds with the science capabilities. The modern learning environment is rich with information and opportunities for our students, but it is also a bewildering place of misinformation and pseudo-science. The greatest […]

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Metrics for the spread of a powerful idea (updated)

June 28, 2015

I came home after working in Christchurch with the Ōtākaro Cluster to find a package on my desk. It contained my author copies of Læringsmål og taksonomiske redskaber. The Danish contribution written by Bodil Nielsen, Annette Hildebrand Jensen, Lene Skovbo Heckmann , Victoria Grønning Iverssøn and Kirsten Frøhlich Well , with other chapters by James […]

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How to introduce SOLO Taxonomy

July 22, 2013

Introducing a school community to SOLO Taxonomy (Biggs and Collis 1982) is a little like squeezing yourself into a Captain Kirk onesie and imagining yourself standing on the deck of the Enterprise. “Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five year mission: to explore strange new worlds; to seek […]

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Models, representation, mockeries, simulations, simulacra and SOLO Taxonomy.

July 7, 2013

On Exactitude in Science . . . In that Empire, the Art of Cartography attained such Perfection that the map of a single Province occupied the entirety of a City, and the map of the Empire, the entirety of a Province. In time, those Unconscionable Maps no longer satisfied, and the Cartographers Guilds struck a […]

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Feel the burn: Give yourself a SOLO cognitive workout

June 26, 2013

Nicola Richards (a fabulous PE educator in Christchurch) and I recently co-authored the latest SOLO resource – this one supports teachers charged with helping students think more deeply in movement contexts in physical education. Our typescript has gone to the publishers but the ideas around movement contexts remain firmly lodged in cracks and crevices in […]

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The use of SOLO Taxonomy in UK classrooms – TES Kerra Maddern.

August 25, 2012

Kerra Maddern – reporter for TES – has written a thoughtful piece on the use (and usefulness) of SOLO Taxonomy in UK classrooms. A repeated complaint about the education system is that it gives pupils superficial understanding. Under pressure to get them through exams, teachers can find themselves taking classes through the required material bit […]

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