What The Best Law Teachers Do

This pioneering book is the first to identify the methods, strategies, and personal traits of law professors whose students achieve exceptional learning. Modeling good behavior through clear, exacting standards and meticulous preparation, these instructors know that little things also count--starting on time, learning names, responding to emails.

This pioneering book is the first to identify the methods, strategies, and personal traits of law professors whose students achieve exceptional learning. Modeling good behavior through clear, exacting standards and meticulous preparation, these instructors know that little things also count--starting on time, learning names, responding to emails.

Professors Sophie Sparrow, Gerry Hess, and Michael Hunter Schwartz, three leaders in the teaching and learning movement in legal education, have collaborated to offer a new book designed to synthesize the latest research on teaching and learning for adjunct law professors. The book begins with basic principles of teaching and learning theory, provides insights into how law students experience traditional law teaching, and then guides law teachers through the entire process of teaching a course. The topics addressed include: how to plan a course; how to design a syllabus and select a text; how to plan individual class sessions; how to engage and motivate students, even those tough-to-crack second- and third-year students; how to use a wide variety of teaching techniques; how to evaluate student learning, both for the purposes of assigning grades and of improving student learning; and how to be a lifelong learner as a teacher.

"Applying the research on teaching and learning, this book guides new and experienced law teachers through the process of designing and teaching a course. The book addresses how to plan a course; design a syllabus; plan individual class sessions; engage and motivate students; use a variety of teaching techniques; assess student learning; and how to be a life- long learner as a teacher. New chapters focus on creating lasting learning, experiential learning, and troubleshooting common teaching challenges."--

Demonstrating how simulation can be constructed and developed for learning, teaching and assessment, the text argues that simulation is a pedagogically valuable and practical tool in teaching the modern law curriculum, and discusses the claim that this form of experiential and problem-based learning enables students to integrate the ‘classroom’ experience with the real world experiences they will encounter in their professional lives. The study is based on contributions from law teachers within the UK, Australia, Hong Kong, South Africa and the USA, as well as the authors own experiences in teaching law.

Using 10 ready-made lessons, this book equips school leaders with a professional development curriculum to train teachers in areas of educational law that affect their everyday work.

Winner of the Virginia and Warren Stone Prize awarded annually by Harvard University Press for an outstanding book on education and society What makes a great teacher great? Who are the professors students remember long after graduation? This book, the conclusion of a fifteen-year study of nearly one hundred college teachers in a wide variety of fields and universities, offers valuable answers for all educators. The short answer is—it's not what teachers do, it's what they understand. Lesson plans and lecture notes matter less than the special way teachers comprehend the subject and value human learning. Whether historians or physicists, in El Paso or St. Paul, the best teachers know their subjects inside and out—but they also know how to engage and challenge students and to provoke impassioned responses. Most of all, they believe two things fervently: that teaching matters and that students can learn.

"From the growing presence and influence of technology to such issues as bullying and equality, this book has been designed to address and demystify the laws that greatly affect today's classroom teachers."--