Applying behavioural science to legal education

UKCLE PDF project

Project team: Hugh Brayne, Chris Maguire (Bar Council), Caroline Maughan (University of the West of England), Mike Maughan (University of Gloucestershire), Julian Webb (University of Westminster)
Project summary: an exploration of how research in the behavioural and neurosciences may inform the theory of legal education
Completion date: January 2005
UKCLE funding: £4,950

Can research in the behavioural and neurosciences inform the theory of legal education? The project team, under the name of the Phineas Gage Group, undertook a comprehensive review of modern research in these areas to identify its possible influence on theories of adult professional learning. (Phineas Gage was probably the most famous patient to have survived serious brain damage and the first from whom we learned something about the relationship between personality and brain function.)

The Phineas Gage Group website aimed to provide law teachers with some basic information on developments in the behavioural and neurosciences and their implications for legal education, looking in particular at:

• the way the brain works
• theories of evolution and human development
• theories of knowledge and memory
• emotion and emotional intelligence
• neural networks and complexity theory

A paper launching the project website was made at LILI 2005, and further workshops and presentations on the project were made at a number of other conferences. Preliminary findings and reports on the project were made in the following papers:

• Why learning law really is a complex business – paper at LILI 2004
• Five search for buried treasure: what we’ve dug up so far – paper at LILI 2004
• Five go mad in Mindfield: applying behavioural science to legal education – paper at LILI 2003

Last Modified: 6 July 2010