Learning involves change. But now legal training and education itself are undergoing a fundamental change: they are becoming more flexible. It is all around us, especially in the Anglo-Saxon legal organizations. The legal learning environment is, like the rest…
Legal training experiment: Talk less, act more (I)
Providing effective, efficient and motivating legal training and teaching remains a challenge. Based on its field observations and instructional and legal expertise, TrainWell recently developed a framework to dramatically increase the quality of legal teaching and training. This framework includes,…
How to be a great legal lecturer?
Last week The Economist (June 11-17) addressed the issue of “quality of teaching”. Although the briefing focused on teaching children, it contained useful observations, truths and suggestions for improving teaching adult legal learners too. Legal lecturers work hard trying to expand…
Start making legal training worthwhile
Yes, it is fun to get invited to observe a legal lecturer “in the wild” i.e. instructing in class. The lecturer is sometimes a bit nervous feeling observed. I appreciate their trust in me. Increasingly, I learned to divide lecturers…
Strategies to correct inaccurate prior knowledge
How to ensure that the necessary prior knowledge, is used in the correct manner to ensure maximum learning can take place? At TrainWell we train legal teachers to do just that. There is wrong and there is WRONG We distinguish…
What can go wrong with the legal student’s prior knowledge?(2)
Now suppose your students enter your course or learning activity with both sufficient and correct prior knowledge related to what you want to teach them. Does this guarantee that your teaching results in achieving the learning goals? Activate to enable…
What can go wrong with the legal student’s prior knowledge? (1)
Not only students’ insufficient prior knowledge can prevent a legal course from achieving success (see yesterday’s blog). Much more difficult to identify, but at least as powerful, is inaccurate prior students’ knowledge preventing success in legal teaching. Many of our students come…
What determines your success as a legal teacher?
Surprise: It is not your skill as a teacher that determines the outcome of your teaching activities. The success you as a teacher can achieve is determined by your students’ prior knowledge. More precisely, the knowledge relative to the…
Learner-centered teaching: the seven principles (II)
Following yesterday’s blog, here are the four last principles of learner-centered teaching: 4. Teacher facilitators model how skillful learners approach learning tasks. Example: When solving a problem, the teacher says out loud what is going through his/her…
Learner-centered teaching: the seven principles (I)
If you are a lecturer considering to move towards learner-centered teaching, you might want to know what you would be getting into. What principles would guide your new way of teaching? Of course each individual teacher has his or her…