Abstract
Particular ways of thinking characterise each discipline but too often they remain implicit in our teaching and this impedes student learning. 'Decoding the Disciplines', which emerged from the Indiana University Faculty Learning Community in 2004, is a deceptively simple framework that enables lecturers to understand why many students have difficulty in their discipline. In this paper I consider the ways I employed the framework while teaching three different modules to postgraduate law students, in order to break down the fuzzy concept of 'critical thinking' so essential to postgraduate work. Too often, even at undergraduate level, the focus is on mastering disciplinary content through repetition of lecture notes and required reading, and students do not always progress beyond the 'expositional mode'. By using the 'decoding the disciplines' framework lecturers can uncover strategies that enable students to critically engage with texts and so achieve the enhanced understanding required of postgraduates. This paper focuses particularly on my work with students studying the Legal Research and Methods module. There is a symmetry between the philosophy of 'decoding the disciplines' and the goals of the Legal Research and Methods module. This is a threshold module designed to bridge the divide between undergraduate and postgraduate study, to provide students with a deeper understanding of their discipline, and the skills they need to undertake their first significant piece of independent research. The techniques associated with 'decoding the disciplines' have been developed because the cognitive repertoire required of students differs greatly not only between disciplines, but also between undergraduate and postgraduate study. This paper analyses the ways in which the seven-step framework provided by 'decoding the disciplines' guides lecturers as they develop strategies to enable students to master the process of learning required of them as postgraduate law students.
Bibliographic data
Somers, Caroline. “Decoding The Disciplines For Postgraduate Law Students.” AISHE-J: The All Ireland Journal of Teaching & Learning in Higher Education 6.2 (2014).
