Thinking back to ‘Inspiration,’ one of the ways in which I’m approaching the book is the idea of ‘thinking with.’ I came across this idea in Hans Schilderman’s thesis. Hans is one of the people I’m thinking with- his idea of the commons as an organising / thinking principle for the university, and how what I discuss in the book could be a ‘waypoint’ towards the commons…
Who else? I’ve already mentioned Russell Sandberg. From him I’m taking the idea of legal history as a vital part of legal education, and more generally how the curriculum can- should– change to make it more critical and challenging.
And from Foluke Adebisi, the importance of understanding that the history of law is the history of how it has been used, in particular its role in colonialism and coloniality. This means that curriculum change is not just a matter of adding a decolonised reading list or some new modules, but involves a rethink of the law school and its role in making the law. And when thinking about public engagement, the law school needs to think not just what does the ‘public’ know about the law, but what is their experience of the law? Where- in space, time, and knowledge- are publics in relation to the law, and the law school? It needs to understand law as relational, and as a place of absences and fractures as much as reason and common sense.
And of course, William Twining- his Rutland imaginary and his more recent work on reforming and reimagining legal education; of particular importance, his emphasis on the law school role in developing the public understanding of law.
From activity theory, I’m building the model of public engagement. Thinking about public engagement, there are important elements- the people, things they do, how they do them, the ways they do them, the whys of doing them, and what happens. Or:
- why do people do this thing, what are the assumptions behind how they do them… (Rules)
- the person / people doing the engagement (Subject)
- the ways in which engagement is done (tools, equipment, approaches) (Tools)
- what do people want to get out of the engagement? ( Object)
- what happens? (Outcome)
- all of the people involved in an engagement activity, the relationships, and the ideas that the law school has of various publics (Community / Division of labour)
I’ll modify the language and diagram for these things, to suit them to engagement- following in the footsteps of others.1 The main element at the moment is Community / Division of Labour. It’s here I think that the law school can make the move beyond current thinking, by really understanding the publics with which they work and their histories / experiences. Community becomes almost an aim in itself, to better understand publics and through this to build relationships.
To tie all of this to the bigger picture of the university, critical realism, again following others both in the use of CR to discuss the university2 and in connecting CR to activity theory.3
Just got to write it all now! Also, got some interviews lined up…
1 Mcmillan, J. (2009.) Through an activity theory lens: Conceptualizing service learning as ‘boundary work’ https://doi.org/10.5130/ijcre.v2i0.1143; Bennett, M., Fiedler, B., and Finklestein, N. (2020.) Refining a Model for Understanding and Characterizing Instructor Pedagogy in Informal Physics Learning Environments //doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevPhysEducRes.16.020137
2 Barnett, R. (2018.) The ecological university. Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/The-Ecological-University-A-Feasible-Utopia/Barnett/p/book/9781138720763
3 Wall, P. et al. (2016.) Combining Critical Realism, the Morphogenetic Approach and Activity Theory: A Proposed Framework for the Study of Mobile Health (mHealth) in Sierra Leone.
Public understanding of law 