Time to Blossom: An Inquiry into Bloom's Taxonomy as a Hierarchy and Means for Teaching Legal Research Skills
![handle is hein.journals/llj102 and id is 183 raw text is: LAW LIBRARY JOURNAL Vol. 102:2 [2010-12]
Time to Blossom: An Inquiry into Bloom's
Taxonomy as a Hierarchy and Means for
Teaching Legal Research Skills*
Paul D. Callister**
Pedagogy requires both a theory and a consistent method of implementation. While
the literature of law librarianship abounds in suggestions and descriptions about
how legal research is being taught, it lacks sufficient consideration of pedagogical
theory from the field of education. In light of the Carnegie Report, and efforts at
comprehensive curriculum reform, the time is ripe for law librarianship to develop a
comprehensive and properly grounded pedagogy for legal research instruction. This
paper proposes and illustrates adapting Bloom's Taxonomy as a means to identify
legal research skills, prioritize objectives, and organize course curricula.
Pedagogy-the theory or principles of education; a method of teaching based on
such a theory.'
Introduction
1 Pedagogy includes both a theory and a method based on such a theory.2
While the literature in our field boasts considerable description of various methods
for teaching legal research, noticeably absent is any theory drawn from leading
pedagogues or educational theorists, particularly from outside of law and librari-
anship. As a result, law librarianship has an overabundance of descriptive literature
about teaching methods (mostly, what we do at our respective schools) without
significant basis in pedagogical theory. Having built our house without a founda-
tion, the whole structure is suspect.
$2 There never has been a more opportune moment for law librarianship to
invest in developing a comprehensive pedagogy for legal research instruction. In
© Paul D. Callister, 2010.
** Director of the Leon E. Bloch Law Library and Associate Professor of Law, University of
Missouri-Kansas City, Kansas City, Missouri. I presented this article at the Conference on Legal
Information: Scholarship and Teaching, held at the University of Colorado Law School on June
21-22, 2009. It follows my own recently published challenge to the profession to create a Bloom's tax-
onomy for legal research instruction. See infra note 14. I wish to acknowledge all of the constructive
criticism of the participants of the Boulder conference, which helped refine this article. In addition,
I must emphatically thank Barbara Bintliff, the law library director at the University of Colorado, for
her insights and criticisms, and for persuading me to write again on this important subject.
1. OxFORD ENGLISH DICTIONARY (Draft Revision Sept. 2009), http://dictionary.oed.com (sub-
scription required for access).
2. Id.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/llj102&div=29&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
What Is HeinOnline?
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most
Time to Blossom: An Inquiry into Bloom's Taxonomy as a Hierarchy and Means for Teaching Legal Research Skills
Contact us for annual subscription options:
Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?
profiles profiles most