There has been a recent twitter exploration on deep understanding led by Peter Skillen, of www.plpnetwork.com. The thrust of the debate centred on the ways in which we can support pupils move from 'novice' learning to 'expert' learning. Skillen paints a picture of the novice learner as one that is unable to plan, monitor and reflect on their learning.

With respect to metacognitive strengths, this might be the pupil that has poor procedural, declarative or conditional knowledge. If we look at this in terms of the way pupils interact with SOLO, then we may be looking at pupils who fail to go beyond the pre or unistructural stages. Alternatively the novice learner may equally describe a pupil who moves too quickly to the relational stage without the requisite uni and multistructural development.

Photo credit: estoril