Category: Reflective Practice
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Colleen F Shanahan & Emily A Benfer, “Adaptive Clinical Teaching”
This article suggests adaptive clinical teaching (ACT) as a clinical teaching model. This article offers a systematic framework to apply ACT and provides an example of how the method encourages replacing instinct with deliberate strategies for teaching and supervising. It allows clinical teachers to use an adaptive approach to address various challenging situations. ACT asks…
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Colin James, “Seeing Things as We Are. Emotional Intelligence and Clinical Legal Education”
This article considers how clinical legal education provides the best opportunities to engage with students at a level that will impact their inner well-being. It examines sets out an understanding of emotional intelligence and its relevance in clinical legal education. Emotional intelligence is defined as a partnership between our rational brain and the limbic brain;…
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Carolyn Grose, “Flies on the Wall or in the Ointment – Some Thoughts on the Role of Clinic Supervisors at Initial Client Interviews”
This article uses the question of whether or not supervisors attend initial client interviews with their students as a lens through which to examine other questions about supervision theory, clinical pedagogy, and professional responsibility. Ultimately, the article concludes that the decision whether to attend client interviews can be one that the supervisor makes on a…
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Brook K Baker, “Learning to Fish, Fishing to Learn: Guided Participation in the Interpersonal Ecology of Practice”
This article argues that an ecological learning theory should be applied to legal clinics. Ecological learning theory emphasizes the value of meaningful co-participation in tasks, mutual respect from supervisors and peers, and responsiveness from the larger social environment. Ecological learning theory suggests that students can be relatively independent and self-directed learners. Supervisors do not have…
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Beryl Blaustone, “Teaching Law Students to Self-Critique and to Develop Critical Clinical Self Awareness in Performance”
This article presents a feedback process that will avert relationship damage before the learning process is irremediably disrupted. The feedback model consists of six stages driven by learning theory. Learning theory suggests that the feedback process should be structured as a source of learning, self-generated observations deepen and expand learning, self-assessment thrives in the face…
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Ann Shalleck, “Clinical Contexts: Theory and Practice in Law and Supervision”
This paper examines the decisions that shape supervision in order to highlight the assumptions embedded in the supervisory dialogue and the vision that emerges from the supervisory process. The supervisory vision is one in which the supervisor constantly identifies the aspects of the law, lawyering, and the legal system that are critical to understanding what…
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Wallace J Mlyniec, “Where to Begin – Training New Teachers in the Art of Clinical Pedagogy”
This article describes the clinical program at the Georgetown Law Centre and sets out a clinical training program for new supervisors. The program and the article suggest six fundamental beliefs, including: Notably, teaching as a clinical teacher or supervisor is exceptionally difficult as it requires an understanding of teaching techniques, students’ prior knowledge, attention to…
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Margaret Castles & Carol Boothby, “What Hat Shall I Wear Today? Exploring the Professional and Ethical Implications of Law Clinic Supervision”
This chapter proposes that it is valuable for clinical supervisors to identify and understand their various roles with respect to their associated professional expectations to ensure that they adopt a mindful and balanced approach to supervision. Clinical supervisors hold many roles: legal practice manager, senior lawyer, risk manager, assessor of written work and performance, counsellor,…
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Clinical Legal Education Association, “Handbook for New Clinical Teachers”
This handbook was first drafted in 1999 and has been updated many times since. The handbook is aimed at new clinicians in the United States. It contains short explainers of various important topics in clinical legal education, including supervision. The handbook contains useful information for Canadian clinicians, but has a very strong American perspective. The…