John Biggs is an Australian educational psychologist whose work on constructive alignment and the SOLO taxonomy shaped how learning outcomes, teaching activities, and assessment are designed to work together.
Core ideas
- Constructive alignment: the teaching system is aligned when learning outcomes, teaching and learning activities, and assessment tasks all address the same goals at the same level of understanding. Misalignment — for example, teaching for understanding but testing for recall — undermines learning (Biggs & Tang, 2011).
- SOLO taxonomy: the Structure of the Observed Learning Outcome taxonomy classifies student responses by structural complexity: prestructural (missing the point), unistructural (one relevant aspect), multistructural (several relevant aspects, unrelated), relational (aspects integrated into a coherent whole), and extended abstract (generalized beyond the given context). SOLO provides a way to design assessment that targets specific levels of understanding.
- Deep vs. surface approaches: Biggs distinguished deep learning (seeking meaning, relating ideas, examining evidence) from surface learning (memorizing, reproducing, task-completing). The teaching system can encourage either — constructive alignment encourages deep approaches by making meaningful engagement the path of least resistance.
Notable works
- Teaching for Quality Learning at University (1999; 4th ed. 2011, with Catherine Tang)
- Evaluating the Quality of Learning: The SOLO Taxonomy (1982, with Kevin Collis)
Related
- designing effective lessons — the vault’s lesson design draws on constructive alignment
- Grant Wiggins — backward design and constructive alignment are complementary frameworks
- Paulo Freire — Biggs’s deep/surface distinction resonates with Freire’s banking model critique
Biggs, J., & Tang, C. (2011). Teaching for Quality Learning at University (4th ed.). Open University Press.