COLLEGE TEACHING IN LEGAL EDUCATION: Teaching Method, Students' Time-on-Task, and Achievement

Based on the theory of teaching as assistedperformance (Tharp and Gallimore, 1988), the UtrechtUniversity Law School has implemented college teachingfocusing on a particular combination of various methods of assisting students' performance. In additionto the conventional case method in legal education, theproblem method was adopted as the primary method ofinstruction. This method focused on how students learn to solve legal problems by actuallyfinding, framing, and analyzing issues themselves.Contingency management was used to motivate students tocomplete problem-solving assignments and attend theseminars in which training was provided for legalproblem-solving skills. Analyses of variance wereperformed to examine the relation between the problemand the case method, and students' time-on-task andachievement. The results were favorable to the problemmethod: Compared to the case method, students spent moretime on learning activities and performed better,controlling for the analysis for their previousachievement, time-on-task in previous terms, and motivationfor the particular course. The differences inachievement between both teaching methods were mainlyrelated to the difference in the time students spent on the particular course.

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