Conceptualising PLT Practice as a Community of Learning through Practice Research

My research focuses on Australian PLT practitioners’ engagement with scholarship of teaching and learning (“SoTL”) in institutional practical legal training (“PLT”). I adopt “practice research” to critically study individual and extra-individual accounts of SoTL in PLT.[1] Individual accounts were drawn from semi-structured interviews with thirty-six PLT practitioners. Extra-individual accounts were drawn from statutory instruments, policy documents, speeches, legal education histories, official legal education reports, and peer-reviewed literature. I used qualitative methods to analyse these accounts, informed by sociological and cultural theories.

Based on my research, I argue that SoTL is “underdone” in PLT practice, some reasons for this, and why it matters. I propose that we enrich PLT and improve its status, by conceptualising PLT practitioners’ work as “practice” within a context-sensitive community of practice,[2] informed by scholarship of teaching and learning, and using practical strategies.

[1] Stephen Kemmis, 'What is Professional Practice? Recognising and Respecting Diversity in Understandings of Practice' in Clive Kanes (ed), Elaborating Professionalism - Studies in Practice and Theory, Innovation and Change in Professional Education (2010) 139; Theodore R Schatzki, Karin Knorr Cetina and Eike Von Savigny (eds), The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory (2001).

[2] Ash Amin and Joanne Roberts, 'Knowing in action: Beyond communities of practice' (2008) 37(2) Research policy 353.