CELL Blog | Center for Engaged Learning in the Law

In my last entry, I blogged about what self-regulated learning is and the evidence that supports my belief that law professors can teach their students to be self-regulated learners. In this entry, I hope to suggest how law professors can integrated self-regulated learning instruction in their regular teaching.

Let me start by noting that the research unquestionably demonstrates that students are much more likely to become expert, self-regulated learners if their instruction in these skills is integrated into their regular coursework. Stand-alone instruction in this area, if it isn’t reinforced in students’ regular courses, doesn’t work. Any guess why not?

So, here are four things law professors can do (I have more, but four seems like a good number for a posting):

(1) Explain to students what self-regulated learning is and have them do some reading about it so the students and the professor have a common lexicon for discussing students’ development of this skill set.

(2) Engage students in activities aimed at each of the three phases. For example, when giving students an assignment, ask them to set a mastery goal for that assignment and then to plan how they will achieve that goal. Similarly, one day in class, mid-discussion, startle the students and then ask them to write about what they were thinking the moment before you startled them. You can then link the fact that many of them were not thinking about the class discussion (sorry, folks, many were but many weren’t) to the idea that, during the implementation phase, students need to be consciously self-monitoring their own comprehension. Along a similar vein, if a student struggles in class to explain a case, you can ask what the student jotted down about that confusion and reinforce students who struggled but knew they didn’t understand (I often say to my students, “Good lawyers know when they don’t know.” Finally, after a practice test, graded paper or exam, you can ask students to reflect on why they did or did not do as well as they would have liked to do and how their results will influence their future learning efforts.

(3) Model reflection in your own work as a teacher. One easy way to do so is to openly acknowledge a mediocre class session and explain your role as the teacher in that outcome and how you will change in response. Another way to do so is to use classroom assessment techniques, such as asking your students (anonymously and in writing) o summarize the key ideas covered in class that day or to identify what has confused them in class so far. If you explicitly respond with an e-mail or short explanation that ties your reflections on their comments to your actions in adding additional instruction, students will see how reflection influences your work as a professional.

(4) Integrate learning strategies instruction in your teaching. Ask students to prepare for class using one or more strategies and discuss their responses in class. For example, have students create a hierarchy chart for one body of law and an outline of another and then reflect on which worked better for them. Another activity I have found to be very useful is to ask students to come to class with paraphrases of doctrine or with examples and non-examples of a concept (e.g., come to class with three statements a court unquestionably characterize as offers and three that are similar in all trivial respects but lack an essential feature of an offer); if students understand material well enough to paraphrase it or generate examples and non-examples, they understand the concept well.