The relationship between the sense of belonging, mental wellbeing and stress in students of law and psychologyYvonne Skipper; Michael Fay
This paper explores how sense of belonging impacts mental wellbeing and stress in students of law and psychology in an English University. A questionnaire exploring undergraduate students’ sense of belonging, stress and wellbeing was conducted between December and February of the academic year with Year 2 and 3 students. The questionnaire was made available to all undergraduate cohorts studying law or psychology. A total of 95 undergraduate students across both subject schools responded, with a split of 46 law students and 49 psychology students. The results of the questionnaire suggested that a sense of belonging predicted higher levels of mental wellbeing and lower levels of stress. Law students had a lower sense of belonging and wellbeing than psychology students, but both showed similar levels of stress. The results suggest that community-based approaches at school level may be a good way to promote positive mental wellbeing in students and that this approach may need to be tailored towards different academic schools.
Emma Jones
This paper proposes an original framework for the incorporation of the affective domain into liberal legal education, in particular the undergraduate law degree. It argues that the aims of developing both the ‘better person’ and ‘good citizen’ can be facilitated by the incorporation of such a framework. The paper critiques liberal legal education’s current focus upon narrow cognitive forms of reason and rationality. By excluding affect, legal educators’ attempts to foster the insights and growth required to fully achieve the ends of liberal legal education are impeded, even obstructed. This paper advocates a novel affective framework incorporating four core aspects, experiential thinking, emotional authenticity, affective empathy and emotional reflexivity. Incorporating this framework has the potential to achieve the development of both the ‘better person’ and the ‘good citizen’ and foster synergies between both. This will significantly enrich liberal legal education and sustain and develop its importance within contemporary society.
Rasmus Grønved Nielsen
This study examines the use of supplementary private teaching (‘shadow education’) within the field of legal education in Denmark from historical and current perspectives. The aim is to estimate the extent of this phenomenon in a Danish context and understand why law students chose to pay for private teaching services. The study documents that practices presently labelled as shadow education are as old as the University of Copenhagen (1479) and the formal legal education (1736). During a period of around 150 years (1780-1930), the exam-oriented private teaching (manuduction) was, in fact, the backbone of legal education. Sources show that the poor state of the university education, including archaic teaching methods, was the primary reason for this: private teaching was the market’s solution to a broken public education. Educational reforms during the first half of the 20th century challenged the raison d'être of the private manuduction industry, and the Danish welfare state provided the fatal blow in 1960: free university manuduction. However, the private teaching industry was resurrected in the 21st century in a more corporate, professional, and aggressive form. The study indicates that currently around 60 percent of law students have paid for private teaching services during their legal education. Moreover, the study shows that it is no longer the quality of university teaching that is the main catalyst, but rather the appeal of very exam-oriented courses and the students’ insecurities, especially the first-years. The study links this development to the emergence of the competition state. Finally, the study recommends that the findings are taken into account in future reform endeavours and suggests directions for further research into shadow education in law, including through comparative analysis.
Edana Richardson; Brian McKenzie; Brian Flanagan; Neil C. Thompson; Maria Murphy
This article draws on qualitative student feedback and lecturer experience to provide a guide for educators who are interested in creating Wikipedia article-based assignments. Using legal cases as an example, this article details how these assignments can encourage students to deepen their understanding of a topic and consider how knowledge can be communicated effectively. In particular, this article focuses on how educators outside of the United States and Canada can navigate Wikipedia’s bureaucracy and how they and their students can contribute information of relevance to smaller jurisdictions on a publicly-accessible repository. This article begins by addressing concerns that educators may have with student use of Wikipedia, while highlighting pedagogical benefits for students who write Wikipedia articles. It goes on to provide a guide for educators who want to create a Wikipedia article writing assignment – in particular, the preparatory steps required to make the assignment effective, how to support students in their writing journey, and how to better ensure that student-authored articles remain available on Wikipedia once uploaded. This article concludes by encouraging educators to consider using Wikipedia as an educational tool, and to teach their students how they can use Wikipedia article writing to contribute to public knowledge.
Dorothea Anthony; Colin Fong
This article presents a novel approach to teaching the compulsory law degree subject Legal Research. It considers that while legal research is traditionally a non-substantive subject that does not explain — let alone question or critique — the law, it can be taught in a way that encourages law students to think critically about legal institutions and the broader social context that gives rise to them. The article explores ways to pursue such legal instruction, with reference to methods used in a legal research subject taught in the Law and Justice Faculty of the University of New South Wales, Australia. It concludes that the discipline of legal research presents valuable opportunities for providing law students with a deeper social education in the law.
Louise C. Druedahl
Legal education is moving away from traditional learning methods towards approaches characterized as student-focused, active, collaborative, and reflective. A variety of factors co-create such a teaching environment, including teachers’ understanding of learning and teaching in practice. One example of a legal education undergoing such change is at the Faculty of Law at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark. However, knowledge of this transformation is scarce, therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the faculty’s views, ambitions, and experiences with teaching practices. A questionnaire was developed and distributed per e-mail to all (768) teachers. The data collection lasted from 3 May 2022 to 23 May 2022. The main findings were that the surveyed teachers mostly understood learning that favoured student-focused teaching. In addition, case-based teaching is widely applied, but 62.7 per cent of the teachers’ in practice talked more than students in the teaching setting despite their ambitions for another distribution of talking between students and teachers. Although the faculty’s teaching has changed from solely monologic lectures, there is still a way to go to reach their goal of reforming the legal education.
Raúl Sánchez
The American clinical education model is not entirely exportable, to the Spanish model of legal education as a consequence of the functional and methodological differences that arises between both legal systems. The conceptualization of the Spanish legal clinic is reasonably tied to its functionality. As a starting point, the configuration of the Spanish clinical legal education is growing exponentially. With a developed social function of legal clinics, the pedagogical function must be accomplished for the perspective of the legal sciences. Although, the interconnection between both functions is not yet strongly established. The clinical treatment of the legal conflict should also be based on the perspective provided by Procedural Law.
Barbara Pozzo
In many countries, data show that women are slowly overtaking men in law schools. Nevertheless, accounts from American law schools often report that women find law school a hostile atmosphere. Moreover, women remain significantly underrepresented in positions of leadership and power in all areas of the profession. Legal education has followed different paths in different countries to cope with this reality. Thus, while law schools in the United States have developed specific programmes to transform legal education by opening up spaces for feminist legal research and have created research centres specifically dedicated to women's and gender studies, this seems far from possible in Europe, where law schools maintain a very traditional curriculum. This article aims to investigate the differences between legal education in the United States and Europe, shedding light on the various initiatives undertaken to incorporate gender awareness into legal education. The ultimate goal will be to examine innovative methods of teaching law to achieve the integration of gender equality into legal education.