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Conference on New Ideas for
Experienced Teachers:
We Teach But Do They Learn?
June 9–13, 2001
Calgary, Alberta, Canada
“Teaching Law School is hard work. All of us could do it better than we do.” Most law professors would agree with these statements. This conference is meant for the teacher who is willing to draw the logical conclusion and act on it: since “all of us could do it better,” “I could do it better;” since “I could do it better,” “I will do it better.”
But how?
Most experienced teachers have developed a subject-matter expertise, a style, and a classroom persona with which they are at least moderately comfortable. The purpose of this conference is not to uproot them, but to build on them. Experienced teachers who are committed to teaching, whether they are in mid-career or recently tenured, are those most ready to try new things and those most able to judge which new ideas and techniques will be useful to them. This conference will take some core concepts in recent learning theory and use them as a lens to examine the planning and teaching of a typical semester-long class, demonstrating and exploring a wide range of non-traditional teaching techniques and approaches that can be used in conjunction with standard methods. The goal is for all teachers to be empowered to enrich the learning experience of students without having to remake his or her being.
Why now?
The scholarship of teaching and learning has flowered in recent years, promoted in part by a major project of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching to promote and disseminate this new scholarship. In a related effort, the Carnegie Foundation is undertaking a major multi-year evaluation of professional education, with a completed report on legal education due in 2001. The conference sessions will build on these efforts.
The conference will present plenary sessions on learning theory and the classroom, structuring courses for student understanding, overcoming specific barriers to learning, the use and effect of a wide range of teaching techniques, using technology, and assessing student performance and promoting student self-assessment. The emphasis will be on classroom rather than clinic-based teaching. In keeping with the theme of the conference, plenary sessions will be taught using varied pedagogical styles. In addition, throughout the four days, conference small groups will meet to discuss practical teaching issues and the impact of new concepts on existing pedagogical practice. Finally, some attention will be paid to the question of how to bring ideas back from a conference setting to the actual classroom of an on-going institution.
From start to finish, the atmosphere of the conference will be one of mutual support, and of learning from one another.