Curriculum Mapping: Bringing Evidence-Based Frameworks to Legal Education

Abstract

This article explains the concept of curriculum mapping as used in the education profession and explains how it was applied in a mapping initiative at the NSU Law Center. Curriculum mapping is a process by which education professionals “document their own curriculum, then share and examine each other’s curriculums for gaps, overlaps, redundancies and new learning, creating a coherent, consistent, curriculum within and across areas that is ultimately aligned to standards and responsive to student data and other initiatives.” While this process has been used for many years in other areas of education, it is fairly new to legal education. This article explains the concepts, puts them into the context of other reforms currently happening in legal education, and through documenting our own experiences, gives a step-by-step primer on how to bring this useful tool to any law school to make evidence-based changes to a law school curriculum.

Keywords: curriculum mapping, education, law school, curriculum reform, NSU Law

JEL Classification: I20, K10