Literature Review - Legal Education

Changing a Law School Running head: FACULTY DEVELOPMENT AND PBL FOR TEACHING DEMOCRACY

Changing a Law School: AR for Faculty Development and PBL for Teaching Democracy Juny Montoya University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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Changing a Law School Abstract In this review, I try to build links among the subjects reviewed: Action Research (AR) Problem-Based Learning (PBL), and law teaching. In the literature, educational AR appears as a vehicle to enhance democratic practices and to bring issues of social justice into classrooms. Additionally, AR is a way to implement collaborative and permanent faculty development programs. Similarly, PBL as a methodology reveals a great potential for motivating students and for enhancing democratic teaching and learning experiences. By contrast, the incapability of legal education to teach practical skills and its traditional hierarchical teaching methods are widely recognized. Literature on PBL shows its potential to improve democratic practices in legal education, besides being an excellent method for teaching practical skills.

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Changing a Law School: AR for Faculty Development and PBL for Teaching Democracy In this review, I research the question of how to build a staff development program capable of improving teaching and learning strategies as well as oriented to enhance democratic practices and to increase awareness of social justice issues among faculty and students. To answer that question, I have reviewed the following subjects: faculty development, Action Research (AR), Problem-Based Learning (PBL), and teaching methods for law studies. The review is divided into three main sections. The first part of section one contains the general definitions for AR, education for democracy, and Research for social justice. I have done a preliminary search of the literature which links those concepts, as I show in “educational AR for democracy and social Justice”. The second part explores AR as a way to implement collaborative and permanent staff development programs. The second section introduces PBL, its characteristics, goals, and potential for enhancing democratic practices. The third section begins with a general overview of the legal education and the most used methods for teaching law. Then, in its second part, I review the literature on PBL for teaching law. I conclude by attempting to build links among all the subjects reviewed: AR, PBL, and Teaching Law for democracy. The reader will judge whether or not I have succeed in this final attempt. My interest in these subjects began in the place where I studied and where I have been working during the last ten years, the Law School at Los Andes University (Bogotá, Colombia). The Law School has promoted the use of active teaching and learning methods from its beginnings in 1968, which makes it unique among Law Schools in my country. In fact, the School, following experiences of others Law schools abroad, was the first law school to introduce the case method as a law-teaching instrument in Colombia. In 1996, as

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part of a general curriculum reform aimed to extend the reach of these methods in law teaching, the Law School decided to introduce PBL (PBL) in some courses. The next year, a group of professors, I among them, received a short training in PBL at Maastricht University, The Netherlands. Some of those professors introduced PBL in their courses the next semester, and so did I in my courses. Through the years, some changes have been introduced to the original method, as we have judged they were needed, though in a more or less informal and non-theoretical way. We have neither documentation nor evidence on the impact of these changes in the effectiveness of our teaching. Additionally, we have been training new teachers to use the PBL method, but again the trainers themselves have no access to formal sources which may refresh or increase their knowledge of the methodology. As a trainer and a designer of PBL teacher training workshops, I can fully endorse this statement. Besides its constructivist approach to knowledge, which I think to be the best, one of the promises of PBL, extremely important in the Colombian context, is that PBL courses are a way to learn democracy by exercising it. I would like to explore the actual scope of this promise. My interest in AR (AR) rests on similar causes. I am not interested in teaching methods just from a technical point of view or to increase effectiveness to produce lawyers more successful in their practice. In a country with one of the highest rates of income inequality, our students belong to the upper economic level of the population. I would like to explore how education may increase awareness of social justice issues among them. AR has, according to the main AR authors, a three-fold commitment: to improve teaching practices, to exercise democracy, and to struggle for social justice. Consequently, AR seems an adequate instrument for addressing my concerns about democracy and education.

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To conduct my research, I have searched general databases placing no boundaries on either time span for the research, journals or authors, because the literature relating law teaching and PBL or AR developed by law professors is scarce. I have explored LEXISNEXIS, EBSCO and ERIC databases, and some teacher’s training materials. LEXIS-NEXIS is a good database for legal research. However, most of the literature on teaching methods for teaching law is centered on the Socratic and case methods. I have found some articles related to problem solving, but quite a few are connected with or focused on PBL applied to legal education. I have found only one author, Paul Wangerin, who has written about AR to improve legal teaching. Another database used in my research is the social science EBSCO database. It has been a good source for PBL articles, but PBL has been developed mostly in health sciences and that reflects on EBSCO search results. The ERIC database has been useful for finding materials on AR, on staff and/or faculty development and on AR and education for democracy. Most of the literature on AR refers to school teachers and community development, but I found a few articles which concentrate on faculty and staff development at college level. On this area, I have had access to seminal articles on AR within the course on AR that I am attending now at university of Illinois (UIUC) under the guidance of Dr. Susan Noffke. I have also used some general materials about training of new professors, gathered at Los Andes School of Law, most of them in Spanish, and reviewed the literature on staff development for college and university faculties. However, I have not reviewed literature on faculty development in law schools, because I do not believe that law school professors differ in any significant characteristic from other higher education educators. During my research, I have find that what it is applicable to professors in higher education is in general applicable to the law school.

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Action Research (AR) General Characterization In this section, I review the definition of AR and one specific “variety” of it committed with issues of social justice. It is important to point out that there is a recent literature on AR as a managerial tool, but I have excluded all the literature on AR for quality management or quality circles, because that approach rests far away from the critical, social and democratic aspects I am interested in. In education, AR is included generally as a form of “teacher research” and has been characterized by continued cycles of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting since its origins (Lewin, 1948). In a broad literature review on “teachers as researchers”, Henson begins by acknowledging the existence of multiple definitions for this concept and adopts Cochran’s (1990) definition of “systematic, intentional inquiry by teachers” . He finds that still is a matter of discussion the existing differences between teachers’ research and traditional research. The former has been characterized as increasing teachers’ self-understanding of educational problems, responsive to immediate concerns, operational or applied, and frequently developed in collaborative contexts. These features are opposed to the way that teachers perceive traditional researchthe later as an instrument that addresses problems too theoretically or in a form not relevant for their practice. Henson (1996) also identifies three different levels of teachers’ involvement in research. On the first level, teachers are helpers; on the second level teachers act as junior partners, and on the third teachers act as equal partners. He states that only in the third level teachers become true researchers. Teachers’ research has shown several positive effects: teachers become learners, more critical, more active, more accountable, and in short, better teachers.

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Education for Democracy Edelsky wants to find out what education for democracy should mean for contemporary American educators. Using a critical approach, Edelsky asks first about the meaning of the phrase “education for democracy,” placing the emphasis on the word “for.” After that, she defines democracy and analyses critically American institutions, trying to find out how democratic they really are. She finds that education for democracy means that Americans do not have a democracy and that they need to work for “bringing about” one. For the author, democracy is one political approach to economy, in terms of who gets what. A system in which wealthy people can deny the majority wishes is not a democratic one. Because progressive theories and practices in education can be used critically or uncritically, teachers have to go one step forward if they want to democratize schooling. Edelsky (1999) proposes an approach to teachers’ education in which they could be educated for democracy. She concludes that to educate for democracy means to end systematic privileges and create a clime in which people may make meaningful decisions on matters that affect their lives. That type of education should start in the classroom. Edelsky’s criticisms are both sharp and true and of a great value for educators. This article, indeed, has been the inspiration for teachers forming study groups as the one called “Literacy education for a Democratic Society” (LEADS), whose research reports are published in Class Actions . In this book, teachers make public their struggles to build democratic classrooms and to include social justice issues in the curriculum, as well as the ways they have found to enlarge their circle by working with other teachers and school directors. Close to these ideas, Kumashiro reviews the developing literature on anti-oppressive education (i.e., education that works against various forms of oppression), summarizing and criticizing, on one hand, the four primary approaches that educational researchers have taken

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in conceptualizing the nature of oppression, and, on the other, the curricula, pedagogies, and policies needed to bring about change. The four approaches to anti-oppressive education are (a) education for the other, (b) education about the other, (c) education that is critical of privileging and othering, and (d) education that changes students and society. Kumashiro places Freire, who has been one of the most important inspirations for educators working on emancipatory AR, in the third approach and characterizes his view as follows: Freire (1995) -whose work on “liberatory education” has become the foundation of “critical pedagogy”-and feminist researchers influenced by him (hooks, 1994; Weller, 1991) have argued, critical education or “consciousness- raising” (what Freire calls conscientizacao) entails learning “to perceive social, political, and economic contradictions, and to take action against the oppressive elements of reality” (Freire, 1995, p. 17)” (p. 37). Kumashiro (2000) concludes that engaging in anti-oppressive education requires an amalgam of these four approaches and also to “look beyond” the field of educational research to explore the possibilities of theories that remain marginalized, like poststrucruralist and psychoanalytic perspectives. Social Justice AR is considered a strategy for pursuing different emancipatory goals. A feminist activist Morwenna Griffiths , is interested on educational research for social justice. With this purpose in mind, she develops an ostensive definition of “social justice” as a research subject. Griffiths analyzes and presents five examples of teacher research, and tries to show why they count as research for social justice. From the examples presented, the author identifies three categories that can be catalogued as research for social justice: (a) research that is focused directly on justice issues; (b) research with a framework which depends on the researcher's orientation to justice issues but that is “about” something else, and (c)

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research in which the methodology or epistemology of the research is itself a reason for claiming it to be research for social justice. She affirms that, in order to identify in the literature what can be considered as research for social justice, we need to go beyond titles or subject matters, to see the kind of questions that the author raises (power, authority, benefits, etc.), and the methodology that he uses to develop the research. Any of these elements can give clues to identify research addressing social justice issues. In my view, the Griffiths’ idea of making an ostensible definition of social justice is developed in her work as a sort of petitio principii. Her idea of identifying what is social justice with concrete examples requires holding some previous idea of social justice, which she is able to identify inside the article, but that other researchers might not be aware of. So, her definition of “social justice” is not as “ostensible” as it might seem at first sight. Moreover, the only way to grasp fully the concept, in the way that Griffiths identifies it, would be to go through a myriad of cases, which will allow the researcher to be able to infer the concept of social justice with precision (assuming everybody may infer the same conclusion from the same facts). AR, Education for Democracy and Social Justice Among the various conceptions of AR, there is an identifiable stream committed to themes of social justice and enhancement of democracy. Various authors trace back this emancipatory AR to Lewin’s works in the 50’s and even embed this approach in Dewey’s thought on progressive education. Noffke characterizes this version of AR as being at once a technology, a method to do research, and a moral stance, one that considers “the improvement of human life as a goal” . From this stance, we are able of “unpacking everyday events from their historical and ideological baggage” . Thus, AR deals with the teaching process as well as with its content. The AR’s commitment is to the “improvement of practice, of the understanding of practice and of the situations in which practice occurs” .

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This emancipatory commitment supposes to make public practitioners’ points of view about their own experiences and circumstances. Doing so requires considering teachers’ knowledge as valuable as formal knowledge and recognizing their right to have a say in the lives of the schools on which their practice is developed. As the reflective cycle never ends, even the theoretical frame of AR is exposed to being criticized and changed. AR and Staff Development Regarding staff development, there is a wide trend called Participatory AR (PAR), developed from the work of Kemmis, McTaggart and others . Kemmis & Wilkinson characterize PAR (PAR) by being (a) a social process, (b) participatory, (c) practical and collaborative, (d) emancipatory, (e) critical and (f) recursive (reflexive, dialectical). From this stance, PAR emerges as an opportunity for teachers to “investigate and change their social and educational realities by changing some of the practices which constitute their lived realities” . Following these ideas, Scott & Weeks report the process of coordinating the Teaching, Reflection, and Collaboration (TRAC) professional development network at the Queenland University of Technology. They adopted AR as the developmental model for TRAC from its second semester of operation, following Kemmis and McTaggart characterization of AR as a “democratic mode of research.… [aimed] to build communities of people committed to enlightening themselves about the relationships between circumstance, action and consequence in their own situation.… [involving] a systematic learning process in which people act deliberately to improve situations… [and with] dimensions of knowledge production and action, as well as constituting new ways of relating to one another to make the work of reform possible”. Scott & Weeks argue that AR “which is not collaborative is both limited and limiting”. In the case reported, although at the beginning AR was applied to work on

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individual programs and projects, became a collaborative net of professional partnerships during its five years of existence. Zuber-Skerritt’s study , conducted at Griffith University with a group of academics who experience with various methods of professional development, including trial and error, “learning in the job by practice without formal professional development” , readings, observations of the work of colleagues, formal sessions (staff development workshops, lectures, and other formal courses), top-down advice (strong suggestions from the Dean based on student evaluation of teaching), and AR, found that the best way to learn about teaching in higher education was not by given information and advice (on how to improve teaching) by outside experts who determine what academics need to know. Rather … academics can and should try to learn about teaching as they do in their research about their discipline or particular subject area, that is, as personal scientists (Kelly, 1995) and problem-solvers (Popper, 1959; 1969), through active involvement, practical experience and reflection (or thinking) about this experience (Lewin, 1952; Kolb, 1984; Carr and Kemmis, 1986). Barth has worked to show the lack of effectiveness of staff development programs designed and developed by “outsiders” and proposes AR as the right method for staff development programs. In programs where people exchange experiences and reflections among equals, each teacher becomes the staff developer for his/her colleagues. . At the same time, each teacher is the leader of his/her own research project. Acting as researchers, teachers elaborate their own questions and develop their own answers, improving their teaching skills within the process . Cranton also argues that professors are used to being self directed learners and collaborative researchers within their disciplines, but they tend to maintain the same teaching style forever. She has found that most faculty development programs are centered on

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teaching specific techniques and provide superficial experiences to faculty members. Additionally, she finds a lack of coherence between theory and practice in staff development programs. In theory, faculty members are considered adults and therefore capable of handling their own processes of learning at will, but in practice some activities and outcomes are required or expected, making learning mandatory. For transformative learning theory, the process of learning through critical self-reflection leads to modify assumptions, actions and behaviors. In Cranton’s proposal, the role of instructional developers has to change by shifting expertise, power, and decision making to the faculty. To sustain a transformative learning process, ongoing support through discussion and networking seems an important factor. Cranton concludes that only long-term instructional development activities, such as working with a mentor, a faculty developer, a peer consultant, or a group of faculty interested in teaching, have the potential to foster self-directed and transformative learning. Under this model, the faculty members will make their assumptions about practice explicit, including their sources and consequences, and will be challenged to revise the validity of their assumptions, which will lead them in turn to change their practices based on those assumptions. I have reviewed this article despite the fact that it does not directly address AR, because the theoretical frame she uses --“transformative learning theory”-- suits well AR. In fact, the idea of learning through critical self-reflection itself is at the core of AR (Actually, this article gave me the idea of proposing an AR project aimed at establishing a permanent faculty development program at the school of law where I work). Literature supporting teachers empowerment develops the concept of empowerment as embedded in a personal foundation, with the goal of “a renewed sense of self accompanied by a belief in one’s own standards of evaluation and an ability to assume responsibility for decisions and choices” . They identify four ways to achieve teacher

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empowerment: (a) empowerment through knowledge, inquiry, and reflection; (b) empowerment as collective autonomy – power with rather than power over; (c) empowerment as research and inquiry, and (d) empowerment through participation and teacher leadership. These authors think that any of these ways requires the appropriate context and demands from teachers “also contribute to the broader school community interests,” in the sense that teachers’ empowerment cannot be a detriment to the other persons within the teaching community. In my view, this concern reveals that the authors perceive teachers empowerment as a loss of power by other subjects to the newly empowered people. This view is opposed to the emancipatory ideas supporting AR, which do not understand power as a “zero sum” relationship or, in other words, teachers’ empowerment not necessarily means desempowering to others . Despite this fact, all the models exposed by the authors are well suited to AR projects. Summary In this section, I have reviewed literature on three subjects that, from the perspective of AR, are intermingled: education for democracy, education for social justice and collaborative staff development, focusing on the aspects that are more relevant from the perspective of teacher research. Theory supporting Participatory Action Research (PAR) for staff development programs is comprehensive and sound. I have also shown some examples of practical application of PAR in Higher education. Problem Based Learning (PBL) General Characterization The principal idea behind Problem Based Learning (PBL) is to provide the student with a motivation to acquire new knowledge. This is why the starting point for learning should be a problem, a query or a puzzle that the learner wishes to solve .

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Barrows (1998) describes "authentic" PBL as a specific teaching method which addresses all the possible educational objectives: acquisition of a rich body of deeply understood knowledge, development of effective clinical problem-solving skills, and development of an insatiable curiosity and a desire for continuous learning. One important distinction has to be made between PBL and problem solving in general. The PBL goal is not to solve a problem, but rather to use the method to “trigger” the learning process. The problem is used during the first tutorial session as a pretext to identify learning goals, that is, topics to be studied in the independent study stage before the second tutorial session, in which the information acquired is discussed and refined. This is one of the few methods that make explicit use of the knowledge that students already have but not just as an instance for application (like in a problems section at the end of a chapter) but by playing an important role in the determination of what knowledge the students can acquire and how they understand it. Problem-based learning is a way to construct and to teach courses using problems as the stimulus and focus for student activity. It is not simply the addition of problem-solving activities to otherwise discipline-centered curricula, but a way of conceiving the curriculum as centered on key problems in professional practice. PBL moves students towards the acquisition of knowledge and skills through a staged sequence of problems presented in context, together with associated learning materials and support from teachers . Harland highlights some other distinctive characteristics of PBL: problems are taken from the “real life” or are similar to those that the student will face as a professional; the method promotes the acquisition of life long learning skills, by getting the students used to looking for answers by themselves, to applying the knowledge acquired, and to criticizing the findings.

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It is not simply a teaching method, but an approach to curriculum design that encourages specific learning strategies (Engle, 1991), and it is the problem itself that ultimately defines the area of learning (Boud, 1988). In its “pure” form, PBL replaces the subject-based curriculum . In a challenging article to PBL supporter, Coles begins by announcing that PBL is neither the only way of accomplishing the educational goals for the professions nor the most desirable in some occasions. After reviewing some of the literature on higher education, he finds that what is needed is a model called “contextual learning”, characterized by three elements: (a) a context for learning, (b) information, and (c) opportunities for handling information. Though It is easy to see that these three features are present in PBL, at least in theory, the author argues that we cannot take for granted either that PBL can accomplish those objectives or that it is possible to adapt any curriculum or methodology to PBL. If this is true, he concludes, “PBL is an unnecessary complication for the educational scene”. What it is provocative in this article is the suggestion that instead of moving from a traditional curriculum toward PBL, we can develop different ways of accomplishing the goals of a contextual learning model. Nevertheless, Colin recognizes ultimately that unlike other methodologies, PBL says how to do it. Of course, in theory even lecturing can provide context, information, and opportunities to apply the information, but unfortunately that is not what characterizes “traditional” higher education. PBL tries to improve that situation and, fortunately, is not the only one. While higher education has a long tradition of fostering scholarship and of valuing knowledge for its own sake, the primary responsibility of Higher education for Capability is to assist students in their development of the capability to benefit from and cope with modern life, and to contribute productively to their society .

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PBL and Teaching for Democracy In the literature about PBL, motivation and development of self-learning skills are the features usually highlighted, but PBL has a great potential for enhancing democracy. Margetson argues that PBL “is morally defensible in that it pays due respect to both student and teacher as persons with knowledge, understanding, feelings and interests who come together in a shared educational process” (p. 45). Such a characteristic, he argues, may be threatening for people used to seeing teaching as a one-way transmission of knowledge from the one who possesses it to the one who lacks it. Mackinnon provides a concrete example of the benefits of PBL, investigating student motivation for learning in a PBL setting, within a research program conducted at the University of Hong Kong. The findings of the experiment are reported in four main categories: (a) Community. In teacher-student relationships, tutors’ role was perceived as primarily facilitative and supportive; in student-student relationships, a powerful source of motivation was the sense of community, and students’ commitment was far beyond simple feelings of duty or obligation; (b) Ownership. Interaction with the tutors resulted in a good combination of autonomy and ownership; (c) Relevance. Students found the course, the content and also the PBL method highly relevant; (d) Empowerment. Students seemed enthusiastic and aware of what they were learning. The author defines empowerment as a sense of mastery in skills that the students consider valuable. Mackinnon also argues that community, ownership, relevance, and empowerment are synergetic. If any element is missing, it is likely that the motivational impact of the remaining elements will be diminished. Though the findings are interesting, it would be helpful to investigate within the very same setting the relevance of cultural factors in the success of PBL experiences. High levels of commitment to group tasks may be easy to achieve in cultures with a high sense of community belonging, disregarding the learning method employed, while in communities

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with a more individualistic sense of society, group tasks success may depend more on different types of learning methods. Summary This section has focused on the potential of Problem-Based Learning as a teaching and learning method, not only in terms of effectiveness but also in terms of its democratic potential. In this sense, PBL is connected with AR efforts to teach democracy by exercising it. The scope of this potential has not been sufficiently explored by the researchers, who have focused traditionally on the motivational aspects of the method. Teaching Law Legal Education An overview of legal education aimed to be general but mainly centered in the American experience , identifies it as a field with three main players: the state, the universities, and the profession. The market has an important role as background. Each one of these actors has its own interests on legal education. The competence among those interests makes difficult to define which goals legal education should pursue. The discussion swings constantly from a practice-oriented perspective to a general scholarly oriented (with emphasis in doctrinal exegesis and rules repetition) one and vice versa. In civil law countries, a general and abstract orientation characterizes the curriculum, with a corresponding lack of training on skills for practice. The American model, strongly oriented towards practice, has received important criticisms within the academy from Critical Legal Studies (CLS), feminism, and anti-racist left movements; these movements proclaim intellectual independence from legal projects and aim to change law and its practice in the way is taught in the Universities. In Latin America, law was, and still remains in some proportion, a profession for young members of the upper-class interested in government careers and politics. In developing countries, a need has been identified for a new kind of

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lawyer able to promote modernization and development. The question is whether the model of legal education needed to achieve this goal is the American model or not. Teaching Law and Teaching Methods Recently, law in American schools has become a full time career, with full time professors and a tendency to exclude part time professors, who remain basically practitioners. In fact, accrediting agencies, like the American Bar Association (ABA) and the Association of American Law Schools (AALS), require that full time faculty teach all required courses and at least two thirds of the total program . Teaching Law has been traditionally cheap, because is taught by lecturing and does not need laboratories . Despite the introduction in 1870 of the case method, which is a combination of Socratic dialogue and judicial decision study, lecturing is still the most applied method for teaching law in USA. Students attacked strongly aggressive and insensitive use of the case method and after the student revolution of the 70's its use has been moderated . The “single most important pedagogical development” of law teaching is attributed to the introduction of legal clinics. Originally oriented to provide legal services to indigents by senior students, legal clinics has become a major contribution to the developing of practice skills and has produced more critical students . There is reference in legal academic articles to other methods used for teaching law, including problem solving and others, like seminars, but no mention of PBL is made in these general reviews. Teaching Law and PBL Winsor describes a research project which applies PBL in a practical legal training course. First, Winsor reviews the theoretical aspects of the methodology and classifies it as a kind of experiential learning, characterized by posing a problem first, and then acquiring the

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knowledge needed to solve it. He finds that PBL is applicable to the entire curriculum, either as the only methodology within a course or as a component within a traditional course. Winsor adopts this last approach and thinks of PBL mainly as a vehicle to enhance students’ motivation. After designing the method and a system of assessment for a pilot course, at the time the article is published the author is concerned on producing the adequate problem materials for the course and no conclusions are given about the experience. In a posterior article , Winsor analyzes the course problem and the matrix used for the assessment of accomplished goals in the pilot program. The author does not explains why if the theoretical frame is so supportive and positive about PBL, he has chosen the most conservative option and has not apply PBL to a whole course, limiting from the beginning the scope of the method because of the complementary character in the course. The assessment could be misleading, since both methodologies coexist inside the course and may be difficult to know what effects should be ascribed specifically to PBL . Moskovitz makes an enthusiastic invitation to replace the case method by the problem method in all courses of every semester of legal education, no matter the course size. He argues that problem method exceeds case method in every single aspect and goes even beyond the scope of the case method, because problem method has been designed for teaching professionals how their profession should be practiced, and not “to examine the science of law” (p. 241), as traditional legal methods. He argues that case method teaches doctrines, but not how to apply them. “Most students can learn to apply doctrines to new situations only by practicing such application, in law school classes” . After examining the promises of the case method and its limitations, he argues that there is an expansion of PBL in higher education and that if legal education shares the same concerns that are present in the rest of the professions about education, it should follow the same stream. Moskovitz explains the “three essential features” of problem method and illustrates them with the

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experience of his own class. In my opinion, however, Moskovitz does not use an “orthodox” PBL model and though his modified method preserves some important characteristics –the problem, individual study and class discussion--, it lacks some essential aspects, like group self-definition of goals and peer teaching. Another difference between his way to conduct the method and a PBL setting is that his class is too teacher-directed to be considered “true” PBL, based on his own description. But the article still supports a strong argument in favor of the method, even if the example could be improved. Moskovitz (1992) affirms that “the literature on the problem method of teaching law is sparse but laudatory” . Surprisingly, almost ten years later we could describe the situation in the same terms that Moskovitz used in 1992. Once again emerges the question of why, if everyone’s experience is so good, has not PBL become a more applied method for teaching law. Moskovitz proposes some explanations for this situation that are still helpful today: (a) The concern of some professors about the method eating up too much class time and threatening course coverage, something that can be solved with “periodic” ground-covering lectures; (b) The idea that this method is suitable only for small classes, which he affirms is not true, and that small classes are better with any method; (c) The idea that the method is not suitable to first year students, to which he responds that students can learn what they need working with problems and that additionally, first years love to play the lawyer; (d) The time that is needed to switch from another method to the problem method, to which he answers that this is true at the beginning but good problems last for years. In a most recent article, Hawkins-Leon (1998) also compares strengths and weaknesses of two methods of law teaching, the Socratic method and Problem method, and retakes the main arguments made by Moskovitz. Hawkins-Leon’s point of departure is also the common criticism to the Socratic method, namely that it teaches “the legal thought process by example rather than forcing students to engage in their own rigorous mental

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analysis” . The author argues that the most important lawyering skill needed in twenty first century is problem solving. He concludes that the most appropriate teaching method “for the newly initiated law professor of a so-called ‘code course’" is a combination of the Socratic method and the Problem method, with a strong emphasis on the second one. To date, the most ambitious and well documented experience of teaching law using PBL has taken place in Maastricht University . Not only the Faculty of Law, founded in 1982, offers problem-based education, but also the whole university uses widely the method. This educational setting is composed of four elements: interdisciplinary problem-oriented education, problem-based learning, skills training and continuous assessment of students' progress. Following the orientation described above, the Faculty Development Programme promotes active and self-directed learning among staff members. Besides introductory training workshops in PBL, established since the beginning of the program, they have recently designed a workshop called “Teaching in a Problem-based Curriculum”. This workshop gives faculty members already acquainted of the methodology, an opportunity “to rethink their tutor role and the role of teacher in the legal skills programme”. It has two main components. The first component has a seminar format, where the faculty members review recent literature on PBL and discuss new ideas about assessment, computer assisted learning, construction of problems, and other related subjects. The second component is a way of “learning in the job”, in which attendants participate in each other tutorial groups “to observe the tutor style of their colleague and to discuss remarkable points”. They have designed also cooperative teams composed of a planning group, some faculty members and selected students; these teams discuss the contents and approach of the learning materials contained in a specific unit-book. This analysis ends with suggestions about how the materials can be improved .

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Summary In this section, I have reviewed literature on legal education in general and on teaching methods for teaching law, focusing on PBL, specially. Although the literature on PBL for teaching law is “laudatory”, the applications are scarce and the research is just incipient and centered on the debate between the case method and the problem method. The experience of Maastricht has a remarkable meaning for the aim pursued in this review, because it addresses why PBL for teaching law and a collaborative staff development program need to go hand in hand and to evolve simultaneously and also exemplifies the way of bring them together in practice. I have not found more literature exploring the scope of the link between teaching methods and staff practices. Discussion: Building Links I have reviewed literature concerning AR, PBL and Teaching Law, trying to explore answers to the question of how to build a staff development program capable of improving teaching and learning strategies, oriented to enhance democratic practices and to increase awareness of social justice issues among faculty and students as well. In the first section, I have reviewed literature on three subjects that, from the perspective of AR, are intermingled: education for democracy, education for social justice and collaborative staff development, focusing on the aspects that are more relevant from the perspective of teacher research. Theory supporting participatory AR (PAR) for staff development programs is comprehensive and sound. I have also shown some examples of practical application of PAR in Higher education. The second section has focused on the potential of Problem-Based Learning as a teaching and learning method, not only in terms of effectiveness but also in terms of its democratic potential. In this sense, PBL appears connected with AR efforts to teach

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democracy by exercising it. The scope of this potential has not been sufficiently explored by the researchers, who have focused on the motivational aspects of the method. In the third section, I have reviewed literature on legal education in general and on teaching methods for teaching law, referring especially to PBL. Literature on active teaching/learning methods for teaching law is incipient and centred mainly on technical skills. Although the literature on PBL for teaching law is “laudatory”, the application of the method is scarce and the research is just incipient and concentrates on the debate between the case method and the problem method. Though PBL has been applied in some courses for developing practical skills, its use in other courses has to be explored. The experience of Maastricht is essential for the aim pursued in this review, because it addresses why PBL for teaching law and collaborative staff development programs need to go hand in hand and develop at the same time, exemplifying in practice how to assemble them in practice. I have not found more literature exploring the scope of this link. Summarizing, I have found both theoretical reflections and practical applications, useful to address the purpose of this review and to provide me with more concrete ideas about how to articulate most of the themes I am concerned on: faculty development, AR, and active teaching and learning methods. In concrete, I have found sound evidence that allows me to propose a program to implement an effective faculty development program for Law schools interested in active teaching and learning methods. This program should establish a long term AR group of teachers interested in teaching, working together and reflecting critically on their practices. Some lines of further research may emerge clearly from this preliminary review. In the first place, I believe that before advocating for certain teaching and learning methods, one needs to define the aims of legal education within the educational context –in my case the Colombian educational context-, as opposed to unreflectively supporting some abstract

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entities, as may be “the legal tradition”, or importing foreign models just because they are successful in other countries. There are some questions that should be preliminarily answered before adopting, importing or building a law teaching method: What is the lawyer that the Country needs? What skills does he/she need? What for? In this review, for example, I have chosen PBL as the point of departure because I share its approach and goals, but after writing this review I should explore the possibility that other methods could achieve the same goals, besides the need to be more careful when asking what are the concrete goals that our social context demands. A second line for further research will cover the scope of the link between staff development models and teaching and learning methods. There is some evidence that to teach people to adopt a long life learning approach, to be self-directed learners, and to be able to learn among peer communities, requires professors who are engaged in this practice, but I would need to initiate another research project to explore further this finding. Conclusion To me, this review has been an introductory journey to several different aspects of research. On the formal level, coming from the academy of a developing country, it has been an unwavering immersion into the APA world, in particular, and in general into rigorous academic writing, (I do not want to sound derogatory, but the methodological standards, even within the publications of our nationally prestigious school of Law, are not only different but quite vague and poor). Each time I look through my PBL folders, or through the readings of my AR course, or through ILINET, I find something that cannot be omitted, and I am sure this is a good way of not finishing anything ever. This is why I find that the literature review limits are one of its major advantages: the fact that we have to restrict our search to a more or less defined

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amount of references, pages, and time is a way to discipline ourselves in the use of time and materials. These concretes limits are something that I will really miss when writing a dissertation or something aimed to be published, but I learned that it is necessary to establish our own clear limits if we want to success in our written projects. Regarding the literature review subjects, I have found both theoretical reflections and practical applications of them; useful to address the goals that I had when I initiated this review. Specially, I have found support for my initial idea that there is a need to build links between PBL for teaching law and AR for staff development. This finding has produced ambiguous feelings on me, because if on one hand is good to know that I am not alone, on the other hand is a bit sad to discover that “my” idea was not original or revolutionary at all. In short, I am learning, and I enjoy learning. The only thing that I would like to add is my thanks to you, Prof. Walsh, for giving us the opportunity to study themes that we really care about and for your dedication to guide us into this journey with your permanent feedback. References