Teaching Ideas of the Month

Institute for Law Teaching and Learning
Institute for Law Teaching and Learning

We get three ideas this month!

First, Who Are You Inviting to Your Class This Semester?

A colleague invites at least one practicing lawyer to speak in every course. As associate dean, she asked her colleagues to do the same. Why? Because practicing lawyers bring a fresh perspective. Students learn first-hand about how the course material applies in the real world. And when the guest conveys her excitement about practicing law, students are inspired and reminded why they went to law school.


To read more about this idea, please go to http://lawteaching.org/ideas/

Second, Peter Lorain, Teaching That Emphasizes Active Engagement: Improving Learning for Middle School Students (+ bonus article), National Education Association website.

Two excerpts found on the National Education Association's website may be short but they offer very useful insights to law teachers.

"Teaching that Emphasizes Active Engagement: Improving Learning for Middle School Students" can be found at http://www.nea.org/tools/16708.htm.

This short article reminds us that classroom presentation is only one aspect of effective teaching. To teach effectively, you must do the following:

Prepare effectively including:
Thoroughly learn/understand the curriculum.
Identify teaching objectives and strategies that engage students and build understanding.
Ask yourself these planning questions:
What is the goal?
What order does the teaching need to follow?
What do the students already know?
What do you want them to learn?
Prepare the lecture or instruction of the concepts and skills, based on your goals.
Construct processing/learning activities that match the concepts, skills, and goals.
Make Effective use of classroom time which includes:
More than lecturing; and
Designing classroom presentations in a way that "help[s] students draw on their experiences to build a scaffold on which they can hang new ideas."
Engage in Processing Activities that "cause students to pose questions, manipulate information, and relate the new learning to what they already know."

Third, "12 Principles for Brain-Based Learning" is also available on the NEA website at http://edweb.sdsu.edu/people/cmathison/armaitiisland/files/BBLrngPrin.pdf.

This article lays out twelve principles for effective teaching based on neuroscientific research. The similarity between these principles and the recommendations made by the Carnegie and Best Practices reports is worth examining. For example the article and the reports both imply, "Any complex subject is given meaning when embedded in real experience" and "Effective education must give learners an opportunity to formulate their own patterns of understanding. That means learners need a chance to put skills and ideas together in their own way." In other words the article provides neuroscientific support for many of the recommendations of the Carnegie and Best Practices reports.

These two articles should at least give us pause before we conveniently dismiss learning theory which also strongly and inconveniently suggests that, as law professors, we need to do more work to be effective teachers.
http://www.nea.org/tools/16708.htm