Teacher-Scholar Mini Grant Recipient, Professor Nancy Arrington

This summer I was awarded the TeacherScholar Mini Grant. Through this grant, I am collaborating with POLS student Brooksley Pruitt on a project that uses the lenses of co-learning and a pedagogy of vulnerability to assess the effectiveness of “the Book Club Module,” a pedagogical tactic to build classroom culture and incorporate research methods learning into substantive upper-division classes.

In the Book Club Module, instructors assign recent articles that they have not yet read and read for the first time with their students in preparation for class. Class runs as a “book club” in the sense that the instructor and students share immediate opinions and reactions to the assigned reading. Leveraging survey data and written self-reflections of students in an upper division Judicial Politics course, we assess whether this tactic helped demystify academic research and increase understanding of research methods in judicial politics.