'Learning' Research and Legal Education: A Brief Overview and Selected Bibliographical Survey

Abstract:     
At its core, education is about learning. Every educator, legal or otherwise, must at the same time be both a teacher and a student in the learning enterprise. Luckily, there is a wide literature to help us in these roles and it is growing every day. It should be a goal of every legal educator to appreciate this area of scholarship, understand its breadth and importance, and engage with it in our teaching and writing. This research overview aims to aid the legal educator seeking to learn about learning and access tools for self-improvement. It also provides some preliminary assistance to those researchers beginning to traverse the field on the subject of “learning” and legal education, and it equally serves as a warning of the daunting task that awaits the researcher on that multifaceted subject. This overview and selected bibliography compiles selected sources collected through various searches on legal databases, library collections, and other available sources. The text serves as a guide along the way with some explanatory material to describe the fields. The compilation of these sources will serve independently as a valuable survey, bibliographic collection, and research tool for others (including educators, academic scholars, librarians, students, and lawyers).

The Institute for Law Teaching and Learning selected this paper as their "Article of the Month" in June 2011.

Number of Pages in PDF File: 24

Keywords: Legal Education, Learning Research, Bibliography, Teaching, Pedagogy, Legal Research and Writing, Thinking Like a Lawyer, learning science, learning psychology, law school teaching

JEL Classification: L2, K10

Accepted Paper Series