Developing research skills

C.Coles

De Montfort Law School

January 2009

Current issues (1)

• Decline of empirical legal research?– Nuffield Inquiry on Empirical Research in

Law 2006• Domination of doctrinal research• Demands of the curriculum• Teaching and student support loads• RAE exercise

– Strategic demands placed on and from students

Current issues (2)

• Boyer’s Culture of Scholarship – Balance between pure academic research

vs teaching– Teaching as a creative medium– 4 roles for teachers – discovery,

integration, application, teaching.

Solution (1) ?

• UKCLE – Teaching Resource Notes see

resources>TRN– Research > funded projects

• Support Early Career Researchers

• Pro bono community links e.g Street Law, Law Club, Law clinic

• Special Interest group wikis and ning networks

Solution (2) ?

• LLM Advanced Legal Practice– Post graduate law practitioners– Distance learning– Taught day of research methodology– Practice task– RM assessment – action plan– New researchers library

Practice Task

Choose 2 journal articles or other secondary source and produce a short word processed bullet pointed appraisal of them. You should be prepared to discuss your appraisal in class following the library session. Any items you refer to in the text should be cited correctly, using the Harvard scheme.

Solution (3) ?

• Encourage creativity– Experiential learning/team working– Inter disciplinary tasks– Practice exercise– Blended learning e.g. wiki

• Engagement– Information management– Community contact

Davies and Lowe,University of Leeds

Solution (4) ?

• New courses to support– Summer School immediately after LPC– Comparative legal research

• External resources e.g. ESRC, HEFCE

Exercise group discussion

• What tools we can employ to encourage growth in empirical research– Is there a role for creativity?– Is Boyer’s model of scholarship

achievable?

Group discussion

References

• Nuffield Report www.ucl.ac.uk/laws/socio-legal• Boyer E (1990) Scholarship Reconsidered:priorities

of the professoriate Princeton,NJ: Carnegie Foundation

• Craft A, Jeffrey B, Leibling M (2001) Creativity in Education,Continuum

• Twining E (1995) Remembering 1972: the Oxford Centre in the context of the development in higher Education and the discipline of law, Journal of Law and Society 22 35-49

• New researchers library:– Wilkinson D (2000) The Researcher’s

Toolkit, Routledge– Berry R (2004) The Research Project: how

to Write it 5th ed, Routledge– Bell J (1999) Doing your research project,

3rd ed,OUP– Salter M and Mason J (2007) Writing Law

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