Pedagogy 2.0: flipping the textbook

Dr Doron Goldbarsht and Nathan Johnston from Macquarie Law School explain how ‘flipping’ textbooks can help students master fundamental concepts in law education.

The traditional approach to textbooks

Readings, set by the teacher, also often come from a treatise-style textbook in which complex webs of doctrinal history are explained in unrelenting prose with a density that strains a student’s cognitive load. Rarely are simple statements of principle easy to find amid the doctrinal thickets.

Understandably, this model of tertiary legal education has been critiqued in more recent literature.[1] However, as Keyes and Johnstone have identified, [2]  many of those critiques focus on fostering more practical skills in law students, ensuring that new graduates are job-ready. Less commonly do they focus on how content is delivered, and rarer still are critiques of the texts. In response there has been a move towards student-centred learning in law schools across Australia; and in some classrooms, more radical changes to pedagogy are taking place. In particular, pedagogical methods such as ‘flipped classrooms’ and ‘blended learning’ are emerging. At the heart of these new pedagogical methods, the delivery of most course material is repositioned outside of formal class time, while what used to be homework activities are brought into the classroom. Thus, the class has been flipped or inverted.[3] To achieve this, extensive notes, video-recorded lectures, blogs, forums and videos provide students with course materials before class. This frees up formal face-to-face class time, allowing students to undertake collaborative and interactive activities that were once reserved for homework or assessments, deepening and solidifying student understandings and fostering higher-order critical and evaluative thinking.

Our research suggests taking a student-centred approach to legal education one step further by not just flipping the classroom, but also ‘flipping the readings’.

Flipping the reading

We use the term ‘flipping the readings’ to describe any method by which the traditional endpoint of reading  is moved to the forefront. The reading of context, history, doctrine and case law becomes a later-in-time exercise to deepen learning. This centres students’ reading and understanding of current principles and treats the reading of background and case law as an exercise by which students actively contextualise and broaden their understanding. Just as a flipped classroom centres what was once the endpoint of teaching (homework activities), flipped textbooks centre what was once the endpoint of reading (distilled principles).

Front-load the fundamental concepts

The flipped textbook helps students to front-load fundamental concepts before they engage in longer texts or tutorials. Students can use the flipped textbook to master fundamental concepts then supplement that reading with treatise-style textbooks to broaden and deepen their understanding. Or, they can then use the tutorial to develop a critical perspective on the content without worrying that they do not adequately understand the core of a discussion. The flipped textbook is designed not to provide a full exposition of the history of a principle, but to break topics down into discrete bite-sized nuggets in order to give students a solid understanding of the fundamentals. The constituent parts of the flipped textbook enable students to skim or skip over content that they already understand, or that they feel they can return to later, rather than demanding that they understand a chapter as a whole. In this way, the flipped textbook allows students to guide their own learning. Ideally, they will read it before a flipped lecture, but also afterwards – or, perhaps, before reading a treatise-style textbook. The approach will depend on the student’s confidence in their comprehension of a topic.

In addition, flipped textbooks can benefit students by preventing them from feeling a sense of embarrassment. They have unrestricted access to the book and can re-read the relevant Q&As to reinforce foundational concepts. Moreover, students can engage with the textbook at their own pace. If a student has forgotten a concept or is less confident in their understanding of it, there is no sense of judgement for having re-engaged with the book.

Helping with revision

A flipped textbook also assists students with revision, as it is a more manageable text for students of all academic capacities. It is also an appropriate resource for open-book examinations, where there is minimal time to review the foundational concepts that students are expected to comprehended. Students can access concise explanations of foundational concepts as a quick refresher to assist them in answering examination questions with the confidence they need. Further, using the Q&A format fosters the reading skills of skimming, scanning, detailed reading and revision reading.

The flipped textbook steers away from the traditional textbook format by eschewing long blocks of exposition in which foundational concepts are often explained in their entirety. Instead, the foundational concepts are broken down into important and interesting constituent parts, a purposeful fragmentation that is reflected in the structure of the content. By breaking foundational concepts down into their discrete parts and separating them quite literally across pages, the ‘Question’ section focuses students’ minds on each part in turn. This encourages greater skimming and scanning. The format encourages students to check their own knowledge through reading the larger text questions. Students identify the questions of interest or areas of concern in their individual parts. Some students will no doubt skip questions where a constituent part of a concept or doctrine is already well known to them, where it is apparent from other knowledge, or where it is not the focus of their study. In this way, the structure of the book is designed to improve student engagement in effective reading practices.

Increasing accessibility

Another benefit of the flipped textbook is that it is a more accessible alternative for students from non-English-language backgrounds, many of whom experience difficulties in engaging with a text and comprehending information. These difficulties can affect a student’s confidence, which is a significant indicator of student performance. The flipped textbook can assist these students, as it offers a simplified version of the required foundational concepts and is less complex and confronting than a traditional textbook.

Reflection and recommendations

The flipped reading approach promises to address the challenges that current textbooks ignore. It will supplement the lack of connection that students experience while working remotely, remedy the difficulties posed by embarrassment and examinations in the traditional teaching model, and foster more effective reading skills in law students. The approach will supplement traditional means of accessing fundamental principles and provide a fresher approach to law texts, whether for legal education or legal practice – particularly in the remote learning and working environments, where in-person discussion-based learning or knowledge-sharing is impeded and the difficulties of the traditional legal teaching method are exacerbated.

Further reading on flipped classrooms

[1] Brame, C. J. 2016. ‘Effective Educational Videos: Principles and Guidelines for Maximizing Student Learning from Video Content.’ CBE Life Sciences Education 15 (4); Kerper, J. 2001. ‘Let’s Space Out: Rethinking the Design of Law School Texts.’ Journal of Legal Education 51 (2): 267­–78.

[2] Keyes, M., and R. Johnstone. 2004. ‘Changing Legal Education: Rhetoric, Reality, and Prospects for the Future.’ Sydney Law Review 26 (4): 537–64

[3] Chen, K. S., L. Monrouxe, Y. H. Lu, C. C. Jenq, Y. J. Chang, Y. C. Chang, and P. Y. Chai. 2018. ‘Academic Outcomes of Flipped Classrooms: A Meta-Analysis.’ Medical Education 52 (9): 910–24.

Doron Goldbarsht, LLB LLM (HUJI) PHD (UNSW), is a Senior Lecturer at Macquarie Law School, Macquarie University. Nathan Johnston, LLB, LLM (UOW), is a Tutor at Macquarie Law School, Macquarie University.

Image credits: Photos by Elisa Calvet B. on Unsplash“>Elisa Calvet B. (Unsplash); and Doron Goldbarsht.