‘A MUTUAL CONFRONTATION OF STRUCTURE AND ACCIDENT’ A FRAMEWORK FOR RESEARCHING HOW LAWYER-MENTORS ENGAGE WITH SCHOLARSHIP OF TEACHING

Presentation to the 11th International Journal of Clinical Legal Education annual conference, Griffith University, Brisbane, 16 July 2013.

Whether lawyers use intuition, educational theory, practical philosophy or something else, Greaves is interested in how lawyers who teach lawyers’ skills at the post-graduate pre-admission stage engage in scholarly activities regarding their teaching work. Defining ‘scholarly activities’ is problematic, perhaps more so if clinical/practical legal education is exiled to academia’s periphery. What constitutes ‘scholarly’ work; is it necessary or desirable? What motivates teachers’ engagement with scholarly work; what is their capacity to do so? What symbolic support and resources do clinical schools commit to scholarly activities regarding teaching? Greaves describes how he adopts Lévi-Strauss’ concept of bricolage to interlace interdisciplinary theories, qualitative methodologies and methods to investigate the above questions reflectively and reflexively. Greaves argues innovative lawyers engage in bricolage by experimentally reorganising and coalescing practices and knowledge as part of a dynamic ‘dialogue with the materials and means of execution.’* Similarly, bricolage is well adapted toward design and conduct of theoretically coherent and innovative study of lawyers’ engagement with scholarly activities regarding their teaching work. Here, bricolage involves experiments with theories, methodologies, and methods in a process involving ‘construction and reconstruction, contextual diagnosis, negotiation and readjustment.’