Quasi-experimental Research on Teaching Methods of Legal Education in China

Abstract

The teaching methods employed by law teachers play an important role in training appropriate graduate attributes of law students in legal education, since teaching methods are one of the important factors that would impact on students' learning. This thesis aims to explore whether adopting alternative teaching methods (i.e., the combination of case method and problem-based method) could generate better learning outcomes and promote wider graduate attributes training than using the traditional lecture method in the context of Chinese legal education system. This thesis also seeks to investigate whether law students in mainland China have acquired sufficient graduate attributes for their future legal work through the current teaching methods commonly used at law schools. An embedded mixed methods design was used including an online survey, a quasi-experimental teaching intervention followed by semi-structured interviews. The survey study indicated that both law student and law teacher participants agreed that lecture method still predominates in law schools in China and that the use of lecture method in law schools should be reduced by at least 20%. The perception of the legal professionals and law students suggested that law students probably do not have sufficient depth in graduate attributes through the current predominantly lecture-based legal education system. The teaching intervention study showed that the experimental group achieved higher mean scores in the post-test compared with the control group (d= .65). The difference between the experimental and control group test performance was both statistically significant and of moderate size. The results of the interview study supported the intervention study that the experimental group students experienced positive changes through the intervention and improved the training of a wider range of graduate attributes, such as oral communication, and team-work. This thesis focuses on the possible relationship between expanding the diversity of teaching methods and graduate attributes attainments within the context of legal education. This thesis shows the practicability and the effectiveness of introducing the case method and problem-based method into Chinese legal education system.