Law Commons^™

Time To Blossom: An Inquiry Into Bloom’S Taxonomy As A Means To Ordered Legal Research Skills, Paul D. Callister

Paul D. Callister

Within law librarianship and legal education, there has been far too little scholarly engagement on the underlying pedagogy at the heart of legal research instruction. To correct this deficiency, law librarianship needs to open a dialogue and should consider adapting Bloom’s Taxonomy as a common schema for a collaborative effort. This paper was initially presented at the "Conference on Legal Information: Scholarship and Teaching," held at the University of Colorado Law School on June 21-22, 2009, as part of its Boulder Summer Conference Series. It follows the author's own recently published challenge to law librarianship and legal research instructors to …

Thinking Like A Research Expert: Schemata For Teaching Complex Problem-Solving Skills, Paul D. Callister

Paul D. Callister

The difference between expert and novice problem-solvers is that experts have organized their thinking into schemata or mental constructs to both see and solve problems. This article demonstrates why schemata are important, arguing that schemata need to be made explicit in the classroom. It illustrates the use of schemata to understand and categorize complex research problems, map the terrain of legal research resources, match appropriate resources to types of problems, and work through the legal research process. The article concludes by calling upon librarians and research instructors to produce additional schemata and develop a common hierarchical taxonomy of skills, a …

Beyond Training: Law Librarianship’S Quest For The Pedagogy Of Legal Research Instruction, Paul D. Callister

Paul D. Callister

The paper (I) outlines the nature and extent of the dissatisfaction with legal research instruction and demonstrates that the problem predates computer-assisted legal research, (II) presents the history of the debate (focusing on a heated exchange between advocates of a “process-oriented” approach and proponents of the traditional, “bibliographic” methods), and (III) presents the requisite elements of a satisfactory pedagogical model, discussing various issues surrounding each of these elements.

In part III, the paper proposes that a complete pedagogical model requires (A) an identifiable and fully understood objective in teaching legal research (which objective must distinguish between the kinds of research …