The future for legal education research

In this editorial from the Spring 2006 issue of Directions Julian Webb discusses the future of legal education research in the light of current developments in higher education.

Whilst reports of the death of the Law Society’s Training Framework Review may yet prove somewhat exaggerated, the deliberations of the Regulation Board at least provide us with an opportunity to take stock of some of the other games in town. And, as usual, there is no shortage of candidates.

My first editorial as incoming Director of UKCLE has coincided with the publication of the UK professional standards framework for teaching and learning. The idea of a standards framework was first proposed in the DfES 2003 white paper on the future of higher education and has been taken forward by the Higher Education Academy. The standards thus provide a “sector-owned approach” to delivering an enabling framework for the continuing professional development (CPD) of ‘teachers’ in higher education. The document itself is commendably brief, possibly unchallenging in some of its aspirations, but a nonetheless significant first step to formalising CPD expectations across the sector.

The framework provides a set of descriptors against which institutions can demonstrate that staff bring a “professional approach” to delivering and supporting student learning. These have all been developed from the Academy’s existing accreditation scheme. The framework is organised around three sets of criteria – ‘areas of activity’, ‘core knowledge’ and ‘professional values’. There are thus six potential areas of activity and six ‘standards’, which loosely express an obligation to maintain core knowledge not just of one’s substantive field, but also of pedagogy, and of quality assurance and evaluation. And, in a style somewhat reminiscent of the statement of professional values in the American Bar Association’s 1992 MacCrate Report on legal education and professional development, commitment to a range of professional values is also to be expected of staff. Institutions will apply these standards, subject to their own criteria, to learning outcomes and assessment activities within their professional development programmes.

As academics, of course, we will be inclined to take a hard look at this document. It can be criticised, for sure – perhaps as a statement of the blindingly obvious, a reification of established good practice, perhaps as yet another example of the post-regulatory state’s obsession with the creation of localised systems of audit and accountability, perhaps even as another nail in the coffin of academic freedom. These debates are significant, and welcome if they get us thinking and talking seriously about the nature of the academic role and the means by which we should be accountable for its continuing professional performance.

In that spirit of creative contentiousness, I suggest the framework is particularly to be welcomed insofar as it values and supports the development of ‘pedagogic research’ (pedR), that is, research and scholarship specifically on the philosophies, processes and outcomes of teaching and learning. PedR matters, particularly in the context of the changing and varied experiences and expectations of learning that students bring to their higher education. Just because certain approaches to teaching and learning ‘worked’ (or at least, we assumed, did relatively little obvious harm) 20-30 years ago is a somewhat unscholarly basis for assuming that they will work today. PedR provides an important means of understanding and sharing what constitutes effective practice and innovation in learning. It provides us with an evidence base that can be used to engage in both pedagogic and resourcing debates with vice chancellors, funding bodies and the professions. But it is also more than that.

The framework acknowledges the distinctiveness of higher education practice as involving a scholarly approach both to subject inquiry and to teaching and learning. This is evident in the knowledge and professional values statement that between them construct a strongly symbiotic teacher-scholar relationship. They suggest, quite rightly, that if teaching is part of your job, it is not enough to be an excellent researcher who drags him or herself reluctantly into the classroom from time to time, or to be a reasonably competent teacher (in a disciplinary sense), who is unwilling to engage in a sustained scholarly fashion with either their own subject or the mode of its delivery. PedR matters because it has the capacity to capture the spirit of inquiry and creative attitude that is integral to the academic role and to use it in direct support of teaching and learning. As the standards framework acknowledges, it goes right to the heart of our academic values.

Viewed in this light the framework can be seen as part of a corrective response to what often appears as a growing tension between teaching and research, particularly in the context of that other big game, the UK’s Research Assessment Exercise (RAE). Although such tensions are, of course, quite difficult to prove and quantify, the RAE has been criticised for taking experienced, research-led teachers out of the classroom. It has led to genuine concerns that the quality of teaching and learning has suffered, as research has increasingly become a – if not the – key determinant of departmental quality, career progression and a significant source of institutional funding in its own right. Fears have even been expressed that the discipline-based RAE may undervalue discipline-specific educational research. Anecdote suggests that some law schools have been wary in the past of entering research on legal education and pedagogy.

Given its reliance on at least some educational practice, pedR obviously represents a potential solution to all but the last of these problems. So, can we be confident that the RAE itself will take legal education seriously? I believe that we can. The Higher Education Academy, and through it the subject centres, was involved in identifying potential panelists with expertise in discipline-based educational scholarship. The law sub-panel this time is distinctive in having at least three members (John Bell, Roger Brownsword and Roger Cotterrell) who have published on aspects of legal education. Moreover the final sub-panel criteria for law specifically identify legal education research as a form of interdisciplinary research for which the law panel will be responsible – as it was in 2001. This in itself is surely a clear indication that the panel expects legal education research to be submitted.

On the other hand, the RAE does not do as much as it could to acknowledge the importance of any teaching-research nexus. It still tends to view research in a vacuum. Thus, while research students are relevant as producers of research, or as an indirect measure of research culture, students in general never explicitly appear in the guidance as research users. Research strategies and staffing policies are relevant insofar as they show how research is facilitated, but apparently not in showing how research in turn is used and managed to support other activities. In short, the criteria could do more to stress the value of pedR and the need to provide evidence of a clear research-teaching nexus.

There is a need, in the lead up to 2008 and beyond, for the legal education community to stand up and be counted. The volume of legal education research has increased, there are more opportunities for obtaining funding and publication, and I suggest the quality of research in the field is also improving. But there is little room for complacency – legal education research is still some way from becoming a truly mainstream field of legal scholarship.

It is important that this community uses the RAE to enhance the case for pedR, and also canvasses, on the back of initiatives such as the standards framework, for more institutional and sectoral support of pedR to underpin a rigorous practice of teaching and learning. The expansion of pedR creates important opportunities to narrow the gap between research and teaching in our universities, to bring into the research community more of those academics who see themselves primarily as teachers, to enhance the status of teaching as an activity, and the quality of teaching itself. To advance this agenda will require advocacy at all levels – from the Academy, the subject associations, the law schools and UKCLE. It will require individual and institutional commitments to enhancing professional development in educational methods and educational research – we should not underestimate the knowledge and skills gaps that still exist. But it is a game worth playing.

References

• UK Professional Standards Framework for teaching and supporting learning in higher education
• RAE 2008 Panel criteria and working methods

Last Modified: 4 June 2010