First-year law students’ construction of professional identity through writing

While there is a considerable body of research on law student identity construction based on interviews and transcripts of classroom talk, there is very little work based on student written texts. In this article two letters of advice written by beginning law students are analysed, using Ivanic and Camps’s (2001) framework, as an example of identity formation. Legal identity is argued to be formed by students’ attempts to accommodate a dynamic, partial, practitioner role of provider of advice to the traditional analytic focus of the law student. The process of accommodation is evident in the language of the letters, which show disfluencies resulting from attempts to combine different roles into a coherent legal identity. Comparison with a professionally written letter suggests that, rather than seeking to shape a coherent position, lawyers are able simultaneously to hold incompatible perspectives, concealing the tensions by foregrounding some perspectives and backgrounding others.

I’m not like everybody else - online forums and PLT

This paper reports some of the findings from a study undertaken as part of the research component for a master of professional education and training degree.
The objectives of the study were to investigate students’ perceptions and satisfaction regarding CMC activities, including community of inquiry framework elements and self-system factors, and to frame recommendations that might improve the use of online discussions as a teaching medium in practical legal training.
A literature review identified themes arising from previous studies concerning the use of CMC in adult learning. The elements of the Community of Inquiry framework and Marzano and Kendall’s concept of students’ Self System were used as reference points to frame the study.
An online questionnaire was used to collect data from students who had undertaken online discussion activities as part of their practical legal training in the professional responsibility in New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria. The data included the students’ opinions, attitudes and perceptions regarding the online discussions. The data was analysed using descriptive statistics that tended to indicate the participants were satisfied with online discussions as teaching medium for PLT. Tests for association between certain variables conducted using Barnard’s Exact Test disclosed 30 possible associations.
This paper focuses on part of the findings, namely associations between the participants’ attributes and contexts, student-student interactions, and satisfaction with the learning experience.
Further research specifically concerning the design and delivery of blended programs of practical legal training would be beneficial. Further study involving quantitative and qualitative methods and regarding the use of computer-mediated communications in PLT is recommended.

Skills in LLB threshold learning outcomes and competency standards for entry-level lawyers – a comparison using CAQDAS

This exploratory study analysed the Threshold Learning Outcomes ("TLOs") specified in the Bachelor of Laws Learning and Teaching Academic Standards Statement December 2010, and the Competency Standards for Entry-Level Lawyers for Practical Legal Training, as updated by the Australasian Professional Legal Education Council and Law Admissions Consultative Committee in February 2002 ("NCS"). The qualitative analysis was undertaken using the NVivo computer assisted qualitative data analysis software ("CAQDAS"), to investigate how skills were categorised and defined in each of the documents. The results were then analysed to compare the respective categorisation and definition of skills, and to point to potential complements, overlaps, conflicts, gaps, or blind spots, between the TLOs and the NCS. The findings, and the methodology adopted, might provide insights for future instructional design, content, and delivery of Practical Legal Training programs, and for future reviews of the TLOs and NCS.

Interconnectedness, multiplexity and the global student : the role of blogging and micro blogging in opening students horizons

The authors explore the world of blogging and micro blogging (twitter) as a means of mediating engagement with students, lawyers, academics and other interested and interesting people around the world. Through the use of auto-ethnographic case studies of their own experiences with blogging and micro blogging tools, the authors propose that far from being a distraction from student learning, these tools have the potential to open up an international professional collaborative space beyond the physical classroom, for both academics and our students, from their first year experience through to practical legal training and continuing professional development.

A mutual confrontation of structure and accident : a framework for researching how lawyer-mentors engage with scholarship of teaching

This is an edited version of 'A mutual confrontation of structure and accident' - a paper presented by Kristoffer Greaves at the International Journal of Clinical Legal Education conference in Brisbane July 2013.

Out of the shadows: a discussion on law reform for the prevention of financial abuse of older people

Financial abuse of older people too often lives ‘in the shadows, hidden by fear and shame’. This and the protective love between family members can screen changes that are critical to an older person’s financial and living arrangements. Rather than a single event, it is usually a series of well-intentioned but ill-considered financial acts, which at some point tips over into abuse interwoven with an intricate web of family relationships. Was a transfer of title or a loan to an adult child really misappropriation? Has thoughtlessness become undue influence or even theft? 

‘Yes, no, maybe, can you repeat the question?’ : Is thinking like a lawyer different to thinking like a teacher?

Presentation at APLEC 2013. 
Kristoffer Greaves is researching how lawyers who teach lawyers’ skills in PLT engage in scholarly activities regarding their teaching work. This qualitative research involves cross-disciplinary exchanges between law, legal education, education theory and practice, sociology of law, and cultural theory. Data collected for the research includes 30+ hours semi-structured interviews with 35 PLT practitioners working with different PLT providers around Australia.
One question asked during the interviews - Is thinking like a lawyer different to thinking like a teacher? - elicited reflective and diverse responses and insights about how PLT practitioners reconcile ‘thinking like a lawyer’ with their teaching and mentoring work.
This presentation discusses the relevance and significance of these insights in the context of scholarship of teaching in PLT, and practical legal training’s ‘big picture’ purpose to improve protection of clients, protection of the administration of justice, and the assurance of the quality of legal services.

“Digital Literacy” in #legaled, begins here?

Discusses issues of interaction, enablement, social justice, flexibility, overload, and industrialisation in legal education and practical legal training, with reference to flexible, online and distance education and "digital literacy".

PLT practitioners : soldiers For “vocationalism”, or double agents?

This presentation extends on some previous work around my PhD research.
I question ways in which social structures are inscribed into legal education practices, and conversely, whether practices can modify those structures. I argue PLT practitioners are not simply soldiers for a “vocationalist” strategy. Instead, I re-imagine PLT practitioners as “double agents” or “resistance fighters”, lamplighters in a still emergent professional trajectory. It is a trajectory catalysed by the 1970s introduction of institutional PLT; just a baby really, in the context of English common law.

In Bourdieu’s terms it is possible, by revisiting past struggles in Australian legal education, to conceptualise institutional PLT as the product of judicial, professional, and academic struggles to produce a vocationalised, non-academic, and critique-free sub-field within the juridical field. Those struggles succeeded, to some extent, in the extra-individual dimension of structures, regulation, and institutions, to collectively inculcate preferred dispositions within individuals about legal education and professional identity.

That account, however, ignores the potential for agency and alterity – the ways in which individuals might appropriate, in Certeau’s terms, the resources of the legal field to explore new professional trajectories. For some, these trajectories involve struggles to enrich, and add texture to, legal education. Drawing on interviews with PLT practitioners, I identify multi-vocal and multi-perspectival themes, including notions of social justice, equality, professional ethics, personal improvement, and indeed, interest in scholarship of teaching and learning.

It is in this sense I re-imagine PLT practitioners as “double agents”, operating betwixt and between dominant domains in law. In my view, PLT practitioners can participate in conceptualising and developing emergent approaches in legal education, and to theorise “practice” as lawyers and educators. Scholarship of teaching and learning has its part to play in this. It provides a means, as lawyers and as educators, to discover information, to reflect, critique, communicate, and conceptualise, insights about “practice” and practices.

Australian PLT practitioners’ engagements with scholarship of teaching and learning

 Drawing on Bourdieu’s reflexive sociology and Certeau’s heterological science to investigate individual and extra-individual dimensions of Australian PLT practitioners’ engagements with scholarship of teaching and learning, this thesis identified obstacles and opportunities for recognition of professional legal education and training as emergent professional practice in law and education.

Linking law: practical guidelines for delivering law to rural Victoria using e-learning technologies

These guidelines provide information, analysis and practical tips for organisations seeking to use digital technologies to enhance general and professional legal education for people living in remote, rural and regional (RRR) Victoria. Given the difficulties people living in RRR areas still face in having to take time away from work and home and travel long distances to attend many legal educational events, it makes sense to explore these options. However, it can be particularly difficult for organisations seeking to engage with RRR people to choose between educational technologies and techniques, given the considerable hype and movement in the field at present. Options are plentiful and complex, with multiple practical and organisational considerations attached to each, and the situation changes frequently as technologies improve. The increasing reach of high-speed internet and mobile networks is creating opportunities for different and more engaging educational methods to be used in most regional and rural areas, but fast internet is not the be-all and end-all. There is much that can be achieved with intelligent use of a range of lower-tech options including low-speed internet, phone, DVD and regional site-based educational technologies.

Dimensions of evidence, the public understanding of science and science education

This paper explores the nature and type of evidence employed by participants in an issue of public concern. By examining documents and interviewing members of the public involved in the debate, the way in which evidence was used in the arguments for and against the issue was determined. Three dimensions of evidence emerged from the data: formal scientific evidence based on the data; informal evidence (e.g. common sense, personal experience) and wider issues which impinge on the evidence (e.g. environmental or legal concerns). In this particular controversy, it was the questioning of the formal evidence by local scientists which became the 'magic bullet' but pertinent questioning by local nonscientists also framed the debate. The authors suggest that school science curricula should include practice in questioning and manipulating different sorts of real data in a variety of ways so that pupils are equipped and empowered to tackle contemporary issues of this kind.

Beyond compliance: ACE and the disability standards for education in 2005.

The Disability Standards for Education 2005 make it unlawful for an education authority to discriminate against a person on the grounds of the person's disability, and providers of adult and community education (ACE) are specifically noted as education authorities in the Standards. Most ACE providers, working as they do from a community development basis, would consider themselves to be non-discriminatory. The devil, nevertheless, is in the detail, and it is one particular detail of the Standards that this article considers – Part 7: Standards for student support services. Research has indicated that this is an area with which ACE providers are likely to have problems. This article looks firstly at the place of people with a disability in ACE, and then at some of the provisions of the Standards as they relate to student support. Evidence to support the discussion is taken from three research projects into ACE provision for people with a disability. These studies are outlined before the author moves on to some of the issues indicated in the research. Further, some suggestions are made for compliance, and the need for ACE providers to go beyond compliance and consider advocacy to support the inclusion of people with a disability into ACE.

Cross-cultural issues in the supervision of a Chinese socio-legal PhD student

The purpose of this co-authored paper is to explain how culturally specific features of Chinese students impact on the processes by which they commence their socio-legal research degrees by research candidature. The presentation by the co-authors of the paper will include a simulation of the first meeting between the candidate and the supervisor. This simulation will show how specific features of Chinese culture and the Chinese education system create a massive culture shock when Chinese research students are exposed to Anglo-Australian academic culture. We will explain how the underlying principles of Chinese culture impact on the candidate‘s expectations in relation to: the role of the supervisor; the requirement of original contribution; expectations in feedback on written work and communication more generally . We will then propose strategies for reducing the impact of culture shock and improving the experience of the candidature and the performance from each party to the relationship in terms of timely completions and reduced attrition. These strategies derive from the authors‘ experience in relation to doctoral research management and cross-cultural communication.

The applicability of Western socio-legal frameworks to the study of negotiation in Chinese society

Theoretical frameworks for the examination of negotiation generated by Western academics do not easily translate to Chinese society because of fundamental differences between Western and Chinese society. Attempts to study negotiation in Chinese society and to improve negotiation between Chinese and Western business people are themselves constrained by cross-cultural differences. Extended immersion of Western academics in Chinese settings and the involvement of cross-cultural specialists is required to advance understanding of cross-cultural negotiation. There is enormous potential for improved understanding of cross-cultural dynamics and development of innovative teaching methodologies if institutional and personal cooperation can be secured. Cross-cultural negotiation as a useful tool in socio-legal framework and/or higher education administration is important especially in the current environment for the Australian education export market.