Meaningful student engagement? Student perceptions towards voluntary external activities within their legal education.

contributors | abstract | presentation | biographies

Contributors

Max Lowenstein (Bournemouth University)

Format

Paper presentation

Abstract

It is important to provide worthwhile external practical student experiences that lead to meaningful student engagement and critical thinking skills. As Nurse (2010) notes in his research into the development of critical thinking amongst students:

Focus groups undertaken so far indicate that students favor the use of practical teaching and simulated learning environments (such as street law, moots and the law clinic) as mechanisms that most closely match their ‘normal’ ways of accessing and retaining information. They argued that lectures and seminars need to be interactive so they can gain practical experience develops their problem solving skills, favoring the use of practical workshops over lectures. They indicated that the method of teaching impacts on their attendance, which may be an issue for a number of institutions.

The diversity of perceptions within the Criminal Justice System requires tutor direction as to how students may gain meaningful external experience which maximises their legal knowledge and skills. This paper qualitatively analyses (Kvale, 1996) the perceptions of 15 sentencing law students to three voluntary external engagement activities that were part of their module. Before and after the activities, students were asked to write down their perceptions. These were to be compared later to see if any change in perceptions had taken place. Students were asked to attend feedback seminars where their perceptions of the activities could be shared and discussed in more detail. In the feedback seminars, the student’s written notes of their perceptions before and after the activities had taken place were openly debated by the whole class and later collected by the tutor. The tutor through meaning condensation reduced the student’s shared perceptions down to repeated common meanings. These repeated common meanings were subjectively analysed by the tutor and a short summary was then passed on to the external bodies (HMCS, HMPS and Hampshire Constabulary) in order to construct an inclusive feedback loop.

The three voluntary external engagement activities were:

1. Court visit away day
2. Prison visit away day
3. Seminar visitor (police investigator of domestic violence)

Whilst the students’ perceptions of these external activities were not formally assessed valuable student reflective learning took place (Moon, 2001). The self reflection process boosted student confidence and knowledge (Hodgson & Bermingham, 2004). The written student feedback revealed a number of shared perceptions:

1. Students discovered that they all had some shared misconceptions about the Criminal Justice System. Students felt engaged by the opportunity to freely ask questions that could challenge their misconceptions. In so doing, students gained a deeper understanding of the practical application of sentencing and punishment law from the perspective of HMCS, HMPS and Hampshire Constabulary.
2. Students learnt valuable networking skills and felt better-informed about potential career path options in their future.
3. Students valued reflective learning through observation. The students exploration of their own perceptions was related back to course content, i.e.) sentencing and punisment aims. The students considered it important for the tutor to provide feedback after the activities. The feedback process explored what observations had been made, evaluated their meaning and identified shared perceptions. As noted by the UKCLE section, ‘integrating reflective practice into the curriculum’:

Feedback is an essential element of the reflective process. Students need to make sense of feedback and apply it to their learning in order to maximize performance in the future.

This small qualitative study provides only a snapshot of some student perceptions towards three diverse voluntary external activities that formed part of an undergraduate law option. As such, the shared perceptions collected are merely indicative rather than generalised statements of fact. There is significant scope for expanding our understanding of the three positive student enrichment outcomes highlighted in this research by widening the sample. This would suit a research team who could explore student perceptions towards the value of voluntary external activities across a number of universities.

Presentation

Short biographies of panel members

Max Lowenstein is a Lecturer in Law and Post-doctoral Researcher at Bournemouth University. He has taught and researched in the areas of Sentencing Law, Criminal Law, Comparative Law, Legal Systems and Jurisprudence. He has been a SOCRATES visiting scholar at the University of Copenhagen, Denmark and Leuphana University, Germany.

Last Modified: 3 February 2011