Making sense of land law

April Stroud, Southampton Solent University

April Stroud (Southampton Solent University) is the Association of Law Teachers’ Law Teacher of the Year 2005. Here April describes her submission to the competition, a textbook on land law.

The competition was looking for the best contribution to student learning, through innovation, effective teaching or student support. I chose to submit an innovative textbook called Making sense of land law, published in May 2005. I wrote the book because, in my role as lecturer, I am a teacher, not an academic. Our purpose as teachers is to communicate, whether though the written word or in the seminar situation. With the emphasis on widening participation, we need to think more and more carefully about how we communicate with students and whether what we currently have on offer is ‘the best’. I chose to write a textbook as it is available to all students to purchase and it had to reflect students’ needs and be ‘the best’.

Teaching in schools has changed over the last 20 years, standards have changed, expectations have changed and the students themselves have changed. Textbooks in schools now reflect the humanistic side of teaching, the need to explain clearly yet challenge, the need to show application of facts to a modern world. In this respect, very little in the land law world has changed. Textbooks tend to be written by academics for academics and, whilst they are excellent reference books full of information, they do not talk to the average 18 year old with little concept of property ownership. I also do not see it as my role to recommend a set text – who am I to determine what book students with different learning styles may or may not find useful? We need to start distinguishing between information and knowledge, where information is facts and knowledge is the understanding, application and use of these facts. It was learning through knowledge that I wished to encapsulate in the book, thereby enhancing student learning.

I started off by looking at what students wanted. After all, students are the ones who will be using the book, not you or I, who have long since forgotten what it was like not to understand a subject. Students said that they wanted a readily understood clear text that took into account their different learning styles – visual, auditory and kinaesthetic. They wanted diagrams. They wanted to see the application of the law to problem questions – the student has to do the assignment or the exam, not you or I. They wanted to see where the law fitted into their lives. They wanted a book that they could read to the end where they understood every sentence on its first reading.

So, Making sense of land law is structured using boxes and it contains diagrams. This satisfies the students’ need to know exactly what it is they are learning and where it fits in, and it also satisfies visual learners. The book is written in a conversational question and answer dialogue style throughout, thereby encapsulating the auditory human voice in the seminar. This style of writing allows questioning, explanation, repetition, reassurance and, unheard of in a law text, humour and wry comment, the kinaesthetic approach. The language is user friendly. Difficult concepts are explained using clear everyday words. Why should anyone wish to make the understanding of the subject even more difficult by using arcane language and complicated sentences? There are worked questions and answers at the end of the chapters showing the application of the law. I show students how land law fits in to today’s society and how it will affect their lives in one form or another. The subject becomes real, understandable and therefore fun.

This is an innovative approach to a textbook. It reflects students’ needs and preferences. It is a learning book, not an information book, and it does exactly what it says. It makes sense of land law. My students have welcomed it wholeheartedly. We now have discussion and interaction in seminars and I look forward to a resounding increase in the pass rate in land law!

Ordering details

The book is available from all good bookshops or direct from the publisher, Oxford University Press

Making sense of land law April Stroud ISBN-10: 0-40-697907-3 ISBN-13: 978-0-40-697907-0 paperback, 497 pages
£14.95

Last Modified: 4 June 2010