They say that feedback is not about improving the work, but about improving the learner. Yet, what aspect of the learner? Their knowledge and understanding of the subject domain, or their understanding of their own learning? I’d like to explore an idea for how we can do both. But before I do, let me take you back to 2012, the year I joined Twitter.
Back then I was introduced to an idea called SOLO taxonomy and was instantly impressed. It was an abstract framework that appeared useful for both assessment and for students to analyse their own work. It looked like this:
The steps were incremental, basically beginning with no knowledge, some unconnected knowledge, connected knowledge, and finally connected knowledge that allowed you to be creative.
However, the problem was that it didn’t discriminate well on the grounds of the quality of knowledge. Additionally, it wasn’t so clear how the final two steps differed, nor the two unconnected-knowledge steps.
It can be simplified to a taxonomy of unconnected to connected knowledge, which in itself could be useful, as some teachers discovered.
Nevertheless, as a pragmatic tool for teachers and students, it lacked an observable difference between unconnected and connected knowledge—what does it look like? This has to be subject specific.
In 2021 I published a paper that moved towards a biology-specific framework, and which took the first step to addressing these ideas. In 2023 I published a better, classroom-tested, taxonomy of understanding biological systems.
A major distinction in biology is between knowing about things; what they’re called, where they’re found, what they do; and knowing about how things happen. It’s a distinction between function and mechanism—description and explanation. In some ways this is similar to the unconnected and connected knowledge of SOLO.
Different from SOLO taxonomy however, I saw that there were two dimensions to understanding in biology—the parts and the whole—rather than an overall single dimension.
So what's the distinction between parts and whole? This is simple for biology teachers who are familiar with levels of organisation. If you're studying the reflex arc, the neurons are the parts. Then there are wholes above it—the whole arc, the whole nervous system, and the most important, the whole organism. If it's an ecological concept, then the wholes could be the whole population, the whole community, or the whole ecosystem.
In my experience, students often try to memorise the parts. They see biology as just remembering the names of the parts and what they do. This is descriptive. Ideally, I want my students to think about how things happen. What causes what. Who connects and interacts with who. I want them to think mechanistically. This is one of the dimensions.
The other is integrating knowledge of the parts into the bigger wholes. I find that students link the parts poorly to what they mean for how the whole performs. They have a poor understanding of how it relates to the organism's life, or how it relates to why an ecosystem is the way it is.
If I asked students what would happen if X part malfunctioned in some way, they would often just shout 'they'll die'. Many times students can tell you lots about the parts but can't tell you what it's all for in the bigger picture.
I want students to think in connections horizontally (the parts) and vertically (up to the wholes). I want them to think in terms of causal steps between inputs and outputs. I want them to understand how the mechanisms we teach relate to the world they live in. And I want them to listen to explanations with this focus. To evaluate answers through this lens. To seek understanding in this manner.
I want it to become a way of being. Biology students are not just accruing knowledge, or building understanding, they're also being invited into the biologists' world with its traditions and ways of seeing.
But how can you show students how to think this way? How can you help them learn what better thinking looks like in biology? How can you help them to learn how to learn like a biologist? By embedding the taxonomy in your curriculum & using it for creating feedback loops between teacher and student.
A feedback tool for improving the student’s knowledge & metacognition
Not all feedback is equal; the beneficial effects are associated with sharing the ideal answer rather than merely informing whether a response is correct or incorrect (Pashler et al., 2005). A further factor is that for feedback to be effective it must be attended to actively (Metcalfe, 2017).
We need both, an ideal answer and action, to improve learning. Let’s quickly consider some feedback formats before getting back to the taxonomy and how to use it.
A major distinction in feedback format is between correct answers feedback (CAF), and elaborative feedback (EF) that provides the correct answer plus additional information. This could include an additional example, an explanation, or presentation of the originally studied materials. A reason for why EF could be beneficial is that the additional information allows the learner to have a better understanding of their error (Kulhavy & Stock, 1985).
The real application of feedback for learning is ultimately the classroom, and it is therefore imperative that it be considered in this environment rather than in a controlled laboratory setting. In a classroom of twenty-five students pragmatic reasoning becomes more pertinent.
As feedback must be actively engaged with, the ability to focus all the students’ attention on feedback could provide a larger overall benefit for the class than any feedback technique that is not interacted with fully. Therefore, CAF can be beneficial if all the students are required to read and correct their own answers as all students are actively engaged in feedback.
Conversely, EF in a classroom requires giving students time to think and discuss, as it is not a one-on-one setting; other students must wait as discussion takes place and the ultimate correct answers are delayed. During this time, some students may not be actively participating, verbally or mentally. If CAF obtains more active participation than EF in a classroom, it may outweigh the benefits of elaborating on feedback when thinking collectively.
How can we get both, maximum participation and elaborative feedback?
Siegler (1995; 2002) discusses some of their his studies on EF with primary school children, which highlighted the importance of guiding students to focus on the underlying rationale of feedback, rather than merely checking their own performance. In one study, the participants were allocated to three different treatments: 1. Control: Feedback only, 2. Participants explain their own reasoning, and 3. Participants explain the reasoning of the experimenter, with the latter being the most effective.
Siegler suggested that (2002, p.40) ‘Having the children explain another person’s correct reasoning has the advantage of both discovery and didactic approaches to instruction. It is like discovery-oriented approaches in that it requires the child to generate a relatively deep analysis of a phenomenon without being told how to do so. It is like didactic approaches in that it focuses the child’s attention on the correct reasoning.’
Importantly, he concluded (among others things) that:
Explaining why an answer is correct is more useful for learning than explaining one’s own answer.
But it is even more effective to juxtapose correct and incorrect answers and have students explain why they are correct and incorrect.
Using the taxonomy with students
So let’s now return to the taxonomy and fit the pieces together. How can we use it to get maximum participation, elaborative feedback, and also improve the learners awareness of what good learning is?
By sharing the taxonomy it provides students a scaffold for elaborative feedback, to give them confidence in knowing why one answer is better than another, and what they should strive to learn themselves. With a shared understanding, whole class feedback, using student examples (shared with students), should become much more streamlined, participative and effective.
In my experience, students are not at all aware of the distinction between function and mechanism, nor are they aware of how much more useful it is to hold a knowledge of mechanisms. When I have shared this with them, they have told me that it has changed their view of learning.
A concrete suggestion for its use
When students are familiar with the taxonomy, ask them to write an extended response on a question that begins with 'What if?'. If I ask them to simply tell me about X I'll never be able to discern what they understand and what they have simply memorised without meaning. By asking 'What if?' I introduce them to a novel context for a concept they've learnt about. Now I'll be able to see who can think in terms of connections (see this post and my book for more details). Here's some examples:
What could happen if there were a hole in the septum between the ventricles?
What could happen if an individual developed less capillaries around their small intestine than normal?
What could happen in this food web is fishing of X were banned?
Answers can be collected and a sample could be shown and marked using a visualiser that projects the answers for all to see. Students can join in the marking by asking what is good in an answer. I have students vote (hands up) if they agree with sections. I have them vote on whether the answer is more basic, holistic, mechanistic, or systemic. I ask them to elaborate on the ways they vote.
In the process I'm not just providing students with ideal answers, I'm developing their metacognition of how to improve their own thinking and learning in the future. If you've enjoyed this—check out my book. Download chapter 1 here—English edition—edición española—or check out my other posts.
@CMooreAnderson (twitter)
References
Bruner, J., 1960. The process of education. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Kulhavy, R., Stock, W., 1989. Feedback in written instruction: The place of response certitude. Educational Psychology Review, 1, pp.279-308.
Metcalfe, J., 2017. Learning from Errors. Annual Review of Psychology, 68(1), pp.465–489.
Moore-Anderson, C. 2021. “Designing a Curriculum for the Networked Knowledge Facet of Systems Thinking in Secondary Biology Courses: A Pragmatic Framework.” Journal of Biological Education. doi:10.1080/ 00219266.2021.1909641
Pashler, H., Cepeda, N., Wixted, J., Rohrer, D., Nelson, T., 2005. When Does Feedback Facilitate Learning of Words? Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 31(1), pp.3–8.
Shute, Valerie J., 2008. Focus on Formative Feedback. Review of educational research, 78(1), p.153.
Siegler, R., 1995. How Does Change Occur: A Microgenetic Study of Number Conservation. Cognitive Psychology, 28(3), pp.225–273.
Siegler, R. 2002. Microgenetic studies of self-explanation. In Microdevelopment: A Process-Oriented Perspective for Studying Development and Learning, ed. Garnott, N., Parziale, J., pp. 31–58. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press