Signposting
See how the content of Guide 13 is relevant to practice and service for black and minority ethnic communities.
SCIE Guide 13: Learning, teaching and assessment of law in social work education
Innovation in learning, teaching and assessment of law in social work education: Introduction
In this section, a number of practical ideas will be presented. They arise both from good practice identified as part of the knowledge review and from subsequent analysis of the data. They are intended as seeds to stimulate educators’ own imagination and innovation in helping social work students learn about the law.
The presentation will follow the same sequence of five key questions that provided the framework for presentation of the data in Section 1
- Why teach law?
- What should the content of law teaching be?
- How should law be taught?
- Who should teach law?
- How should students be assessed?
The resources and ideas are intended to support educators in developing content and processes that take into account the findings of the knowledge review on the key dimensions of an effective curriculum, notably:
| Dimensions of the curriculum | Questions for consideration |
|---|---|
| Degree of infusion | To what degree is law learning integrated with other subject learning? To what degree is learning from practice an integrated part of the overall curriculum and how is law learning reinforced and assessed in placement? |
| Developmental strategies | To what degree is learning cumulative, building through ‘learning to learn’ and ‘learning for practice’ towards final learning goals, with time for consolidation (Kearney, 2003)? |
| Alignment | To what degree does teaching and assessment reflect the evidence that learning is enhanced when students see tasks as relevant to their future professional lives (Braye and Preston Shoot et al, 2005)? |
| Application | To what degree does the curriculum enable students to discuss their experiences of applying the law in practice? How do they learn from their experiences of negotiating conflicting imperatives, practice dilemmas and organisational demands? |
| Relevance and authenticity | How does the curriculum enable social workers in training to consider social work law practice from the perspectives of experts by experience? |
| Criticality | To what extent does the curriculum enable students to engage in critical reflection on the legal framework and its application, as well as with technical knowledge? How are perspectives informed by ethics brought to bear on the legal framework and its application? |
| Interprofess-ionality | To what degree is law learning informed by perspectives from both social work and law, and drawing widely on knowledge from other disciplines? |
Next in this section: Why teach law? Helping students engage with law