Kristoffer Greaves

Is scholarship of teaching and learning in practical legal training a professional responsibility

In Australia, applicants for admission to the legal profession must hold appropriate academic qualifications, and competently complete practical legal training (PLT). The author’s research investigates institutional PLT practitioners’ engagement with scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). The theoretical framework for the research draws on Bourdieu and Passeron’s reflexive sociology of education and culture. This article focuses on responses to a paramount obligation proposition put to 34 PLT practitioners during semi-structured interviews: “Might lawyers’ paramount obligations to the court intersect with PLT practitioners’ teaching and assessment practices?” The proposition elicited responses and insights about field forces within the individual and organisational dimensions of teaching and learning in PLT. These include top-down/bottom-up pressures that impinge on PLT practitioners’ engagement with SoTL.

Computer-aided qualitative data analysis of social media for teachers and students in legal education

This article addresses a new field for legal education researchers. It describes and discusses emergent methods for computer-aided qualitative data analysis of social media in legal education. Social media contributes opportunities for learning, teaching, and research for legal educators and students. It potentially expedites collaborations, sharing, and collection of information and commentary on relevant and important issues and topics. These sources provide content and data for learning, teaching, and research. Benefits of computer-aided qualitative data analysis of social media in legal education include a systematic approach, transparency, accountability and durability, and innovative ways to communicate insights through textual and graphical communications. The article uses two examples in which computer-aided qualitative data analysis, combined with qualitative data analysis strategies, can contribute insights in and about legal education: analysis of social media discussions involving specific topics or events – to study students’ work, or academics’ interactions at conferences; and analysis of legal educators’ scholarly communications and social media activities, toward improving the visibility and influence of legal education scholarship. Research ethics for studies involving social media and human participants are also considered.