Transforming Bloom’s Taxonomy into Classroom Practice: A Practical Yet Comprehensive Approach to Promote Critical Reading and Student Participation

ABSTRACT

This article presents the Critical Reading Topics approach, a pedagogical method employed to promote deep thinking in a variety of politics courses. Derived from principles articulated in active learning, critical thinking, backward design, and flipped classroom literature, this method utilizes Bloom’s Taxonomy as the scaffolding for students to create and evaluate pointed and relevant discussion topics written by themselves and their peers. By utilizing this method, faculty can increase students’ contemplation of the course texts, enhance students’ classroom contributions and quickly gauge the extent to which students understand the readings’ main ideas. This approach also enables students to gain authorship of the material, and it gives them additional in-class time to process the complex information they encounter. Evidence collected from six different political science courses is provided to document the approach’s effectiveness. Key findings include an improvement in the quality of relevant and focused discussion topics, a high percentage of students completing reading assignments with corresponding high quiz grades, and significant participation and recognition for all students, even those who are traditionally quiet in class.

KEYWORDS:

• Active learning
• critical thinking
• collaboration
• participation

Notes on Contributors

Daniel M. Mulcare is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Salem State University. He teaches courses that examine U.S. political institutions, race and immigration, political power, and political communication. He has led and participated in faculty learning communities that have explored the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), critical reading, team-based learning, and gamification. He has published and presented articles on SoTL assessment, as well as race and U.S. political development.

Allan Shwedel is a Full Professor and Interim Chair in the Secondary and Higher Education Department at Salem State University. He was the Assessment Coordinator for the School of Education from Fall 2001 through Spring 2014 and is currently a member of the university-wide Assessment Advisory Committee. Most recently he was a Fulbright Specialist in assessment at the Petro Mohyla Black Sea State University in Mykoliav, Ukraine (AY2014–2015). Research interests include K–20 educational assessment and the use of information communication technologies to globalize education.

Notes

In this article, the “instructor” refers to the primary author.