TY - JOUR

T1 - Assessing change of traditions: teachers’ insights on a legal education under transformation

AU - Druedahl, Louise C.

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - Legal education is moving away from traditional learning methods towards approaches characterized as student-focused, active, collaborative, and reflective. A variety of factors co-create such a teaching environment, including teachers’ understanding of learning and teaching in practice. One example of a legal education undergoing such change is at the Faculty of Law at the University of Copenhagenin Denmark. However, knowledge of this transformation is scarce,therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the faculty’s views, ambitions, and experiences with teaching practices. A questionnaire was developed and distributed per e-mail to all (768) teachers. The data collection lasted from 3 May 2022 to 23 May 2022. The main findings were that the surveyed teachers mostly understood learning that favoured student-focused teaching. In addition, case-based teaching is widely applied, but 62.7 per cent of the teachers’ in practice talked more than students in the teaching setting despite their ambitions foranother distribution of talking between students and teachers. Although the faculty’s teaching has changed from solely monologic lectures, there is still a way to go to reach their goal of reforming the legal education.

AB - Legal education is moving away from traditional learning methods towards approaches characterized as student-focused, active, collaborative, and reflective. A variety of factors co-create such a teaching environment, including teachers’ understanding of learning and teaching in practice. One example of a legal education undergoing such change is at the Faculty of Law at the University of Copenhagenin Denmark. However, knowledge of this transformation is scarce,therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the faculty’s views, ambitions, and experiences with teaching practices. A questionnaire was developed and distributed per e-mail to all (768) teachers. The data collection lasted from 3 May 2022 to 23 May 2022. The main findings were that the surveyed teachers mostly understood learning that favoured student-focused teaching. In addition, case-based teaching is widely applied, but 62.7 per cent of the teachers’ in practice talked more than students in the teaching setting despite their ambitions foranother distribution of talking between students and teachers. Although the faculty’s teaching has changed from solely monologic lectures, there is still a way to go to reach their goal of reforming the legal education.

M3 - Journal article

VL - 4

SP - 161

EP - 177

JO - European Journal of Legal Education

JF - European Journal of Legal Education

SN - 1684-1360

IS - 1

ER -