Coventry University: E-Journals
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Challenges of German first-year law students: Empirical results and implications for legal education
Get PDFThis article addresses the (self-identified) challenges first-year law students in Germany are faced with. In particular, this paper reports findings made within the third-party funded project XYZ at the XYZ University. In an extracurricular peer tutoring format, beginners of legal studies were introduced to different learning techniques in conjunction with legal methodology. Based on previous research, students were encouraged to become strategic deep learners by presenting them with a standardised course curriculum consisting of ten thematically defined sessions. All classes have been evaluated via a written questionnaire, the results of which are presented here. These empirical findings allow us to determine the difficulties legal beginners are confronted with and to derive sensible didactic improvements for law students, especially those in the early semesters of their studies. In particular, we advance the view to make more use of student-led tutorials in legal education and plead to encourage students to become strategic deep learners
Teaching EU Law After Brexit
No full textEuropean Union law has been an integral part of the legal order of the United Kingdom for over 40 years, and features in every qualifying law degree taught in the UK at the date of country’s departure from the EU. The United Kingdom’s decision to leave the European Union (Brexit) radically alters the nature and effects of EU law in the UK’s legal jurisdictions. It is, consequently, necessary for those responsible for teaching EU law within UK law schools to reflect and, potentially, fundamentally redesign their EU law modules. This article commences with a consideration of what constitutes the ‘typical’ EU law module in order to determine those areas of EU law teaching most likely to be affected by Brexit. This article proceeds to consider both the new sources of law with which students will have to become familiar, as well as changes to existing content necessitated by Brexit. This article then seeks to ‘reimagine’ European Union law after Brexit through consideration of the teaching of EU law outside of the EU. While it may be possible to emulate the approach of certain non-EU law schools the uniqueness of the United Kingdom’s position after Brexit means that a bespoke approach to the teaching of EU law after Brexit is necessary
Teaching legal research subversively
Get PDFThis article presents a novel approach to teaching the compulsory law subject Legal Research. It considers that while Legal Research is traditionally a non-substantive subject that does not explain the law, let alone question or critique the law, it can in fact be taught in a way that encourages law students to think critically about legal institutions and the broader social context that gives rise to them. The article explores ways to pursue such legal instruction, with reference to activities administered in a legal research subject at the Law and Justice Faculty of the University of [withheld for peer review], Australia. It concludes that the discipline of legal research presents valuable opportunities for providing law students with a deeper social education in the law
Innovative teaching methods to mainstream gender equality in legal education
Get PDFIn many countries, data show that women are slowly outnumbering men in law schools. Nonetheless, accounts of American law schools often report that women find law school a hostile atmosphere. Further women remain significantly under-represented in positions of leadership and power across sectors of the profession.
Legal education has followed different paths in different countries to cope with this reality. So, while US law schools have developed specific program to transform legal education by opening spaces for feminist legal scholarship and have created research centers specifically devoted to Women’s and Gender’s studies, this appears far from possible in Europe, where law schools maintain a very traditional curriculum.
This article aims at investigating the differences between legal education in the US and Europe, shedding light on the various initiatives taken, to incorporate gender awareness into legal education.
The final goal will be to examine innovative legal teaching methods to achieve mainstreaming gender equality in legal education
The Development of an Academic Literacies Programme for Students in Britain and Beyond
Get PDFRichmond’s Academic Literacies Programme (ALP) is a content-based form of instruction for university students which teaches critical reading, research skills, content synthesis, and writing and presentation skills. It is designed to empower all students to research and write effectively throughout their undergraduate studies. This article is a quantitative case study review of a British-American university’s ALP, examining student feedback across academic disciplines on specific taught ALP skills and comparing their improvement from 2014 to 2022. Chi-squared goodness-of-fit tests showed students valued research, critical reading, academic writing, essay structure, understanding academic honesty, using tutor feedback, and referencing skills; however, survey development and recommendation reports were not meeting student needs in their majors and so were removed from the programme. In comparison, in a follow-up review conducted in 2022, the skill of identifying research gaps was not effectively used or applied. However, independent group testing found the usefulness of skills at the lower learning level improved from 2014 to 2022, as did the application of skills at the higher level. This study concludes that ALPs are valuable for all university students beginning higher education research, regardless of first language or degree course
Written notes and listening comprehension: A correlation study
Get PDFNotetaking is a crucial aspect of learning in academic contexts, but as a relatively casual form of academic writing, it seldom receives pedagogic or research attention in the literature. Therefore, as more students study academic content through English as a second language (L2), research on student notetaking as a form of academic writing deserves attention. What students write in their notes and how they do so can play important roles in comprehension and learning. To address this gap, the present study examines 102 sets of notes and corresponding listening comprehension test scores to determine the relationships between four factors of quantity and quality in students’ hand-written notes; namely, notations, words, information units, and efficiency ratio. Results indicate that total notations and total words written in notes do not impact overall test scores, while information units and higher efficiency ratios positively correlate to test scores. The paper closes with pedagogic advice for teachers and students operating in L2 academic contexts with a focus on how best to conceptualise and write notes
Tensions and Possibilities: A qualitative study of the views of nurse faculty training medical students to be Health Care Assistants
Get PDFIn the majority of pre-registration training programmes early theory is supported by later clinical learning. Unlike nursing, midwifery and the allied health professions, medical training often offers relatively little early clinical patient contact, though this does vary by medical school. To overcome this, recently, some medical schools offer patient-facing nurse training for the Care Certificate (CC) in the first year, but as yet little is known about how this is being received by nurses. We report on the experiences and perceptions of nurse-led faculty who led a pilot for first year medical students to gain the CC in the academic year 2019-20, in one UK medical school. The qualitative study involved one-to-one in-depth semi-structured interviews with the course educators. Data were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. Seven faculty participated, sharing their delight at students’ willingness to embrace the CC. Five main themes arose: i) perceptions of doctors and nurses in the healthcare system; ii) affinity with the medical students; iii) benefits of the CC for medical students working as Health Care Assistants; iv) anxiety about teaching the medical students; and, v) uncertainty about whether this training should be compulsory. We discovered that, nurses yearn for greater appreciation for their work by the medical workforce. These teachers felt this could be realised through this change within first year medical training. Many benefits were perceived as an outcome of this training for medical students, all members of the clinical team and most importantly for patients