Learning law:Expertise differences and the effect of instructional support

Nievelstein, F. (2009). Learning law. Expertise differences and the effect of instructional support. Doctoral thesis. September, 18, 2009, Heerlen, Nederland: Open Universiteit.One of the main aims of law education in both the Civil (European-Continental) law and Common (Anglo-Saxon) law systems is to teach students to reason about cases. As reviewed in Chapter 1, students experience serious difficulties in learning to reason about cases, which seem to arise from the complexity of the domain, the way in which knowledge is acquired in complex domains, as well as the instructional approach widely used in law schools. This approach often consists of ‘learning by doing’, which means that students have to reason about lots of cases throughout their study by using information sources that professionals also use. The studies presented in Chapters 2 to 4 were designed to gain more insight in the kind of difficulties and the underlying causes that students with differing levels of expertise have when they learn to reason about cases in law school, as well as to investigate the requirements for effective instructional approaches that provide more support and might help to diminish or overcome the experienced difficulties

Expertise-related differences in conceptual and ontological knowledge in the legal domain.

Nievelstein, F., Van Gog, T., Boshuizen, H. P. A., & Prins, F. J. (2008). Expertise-related differences in conceptual and ontological knowledge in the legal domain. European Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 20, 1043–1064.Little research has been conducted on expertise-related differences in conceptual and ontological knowledge in law, even though this type of knowledge is prerequisite for correctly interpreting and reasoning about legal cases, and differences in conceptual and ontological knowledge structures between students and between students and teachers, might lead to miscommunication. This study investigated the extent and organization of conceptual and ontological knowledge of novices, advanced students, and experts in law, using a card-sorting task and a conceptelaboration task. The results showed that novices used more everyday examples and were less accurate in their elaborations of concepts than advanced students and experts, on top of that, the organization of their knowledge did not overlap within their group (i.e., no “shared” ontology). Experts gave more judicial examples based on the lawbook and were more accurate in their elaborations than advanced students, and their knowledge was strongly overlapping within their group (i.e., strong ontology). Incorrect conceptual knowledge seems to impede the correct understanding of cases and the correct application of precise and formal rules in law

Effects of Conceptual Knowledge and Availability of Information Sources on Law Students Legal Reasoning

Nievelstein, F., Van Gog, T., Boshuizen, H. P. A., & Prins, F. J. (2010). Effects of Conceptual Knowledge and Availability of Information Sources on Law Students Legal Reasoning. Instructional Science, 38, 23-35. doi:10.1007/s11251-008-9076-3Due to the complexity of the legal domain, reasoning about law cases is a very complex skill. For novices in law school, legal reasoning is even more complex because they have not yet acquired the conceptual knowledge needed for distilling the relevant information from cases, determining applicable rules, and searching for rules and exceptions in external information sources such as lawbooks. This study investigated the role of conceptual knowledge in solving legal cases when no information sources can be used. Under such ‘unsupported’ circumstances, novice and advanced students performed less well than domain experts, but even experts’ performance was rather low. The second question addressed was whether novices even benefit from the availability of information sources (i e., lawbook), because conceptual knowledge is prerequisite for effective use of such sources. Indeed availability of the lawbook positively affected performance only for advanced students but not for novice students. Implications for learning and instruction in the domain of law are discussed

Instructional Support for Novice Law Students: Reducing Search Processes and Explaining Concepts in Cases

Nievelstein, F., Van Gog, T., Van Dijck, C., & Boshuizen, H. P. A. (2011). Instructional support for novice law students: Reducing search processes and explaining concepts in cases. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25(3), 408-413. doi:10.1002/acp.1707Reasoning about legal cases is a complex skill that imposes a high working memory load,especially for novice students. Not only do novices lack necessary conceptual knowledge,searching through the information sources that are used during reasoning can also be assumed to impose a high additional working memory load that does not contribute to learning. Therefore, this study investigated the effects of supporting novice law students’ learning by a) providing the meaning of important concepts in the case, and b) reducing the search process by providing a condensed (relevant articles only) rather than a complete civil code. Results show that performance on a test case (for which they had to use the complete civil code) was significantly better for participants who had used the condensed civil code during learning. Performance on a conceptual knowledge posttest was significantly enhanced when students had received the concept explanations during learning

Uncovering cognitive processes: Different techniques that can contribute to cognitive load research and instruction

This article discusses the use of different techniques for uncovering cognitive processes, for research and instructional purposes: verbal reporting, eye tracking, and concept mapping. It is argued here that applying these techniques in research inspired by Cognitive Load Theory may increase our understanding of how and why well-known effects of instructional formats come about (e.g., split-attention, redundancy, or worked example effects) and refine or corroborate the proposed theoretical underpinnings of such effects. This knowledge can inform instructional design, and moreover, the effects of these techniques on learning can also be direct, by embedding the techniques in instruction

The worked example and expertise reversal effect in less structured tasks: Learning to reason about legal cases

Nievelstein, F., Van Gog, T., Van Dijck, G., & Boshuizen, H. P. A. (2013). The worked example and expertise reversal effect in less structured tasks: Learning to reason about legal cases. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 38, 118–125.The worked example effect indicates that learning by studying worked examples is more effective than learning by solving the equivalent problems. The expertise reversal effect indicates that this is only the case for novice learners; once prior knowledge of the task is available problem solving becomes more effective for learning. These effects, however, have mainly been studied using highly structured tasks. This study investigated whether they also occur on less structured tasks, in this case, learning to reason about legal cases. Less structured tasks take longer to master, and hence, examples may remain effective for a longer period of time. Novice and advanced law students received either a description of general process steps they should take, worked examples, worked examples including the process steps, or no instructional support for reasoning. Results show that worked examples were more effective for learning than problem-solving, both for novice and advanced students, even though the latter had significantly more prior knowledge. So, a worked example effect was found for both novice and advanced students, and no evidence for an expertise-reversal effect was found with these less structured tasks