Resisting the Hidden Curriculum: Teaching for Social Justice
Canadian Legal Education Annual Review, Vol. 2, pp. 1-37, 2008
36 Pages Posted: 8 May 2013
Date Written: 2008
Abstract
This article describes and discusses a collaborative teaching experiment in criminal law undertaken by three teaching colleagues in the first year program at the University of Ottawa. Responding to a sense of collective dissatisfaction with ongoing attempts to integrate critical perspectives into traditionally structured criminal law courses, and wanting to try something different from within a safe collaborative space, we decided to design and deliver a criminal law course with overtly progressive goals. The course was deliberately targeted at "creative students who see the law as a vehicle for social justice," was purposely constructed to actively support students in retaining their incoming commitment to social justice lawyering, and was intentionally non-traditional in its content, structure, delivery, and evaluation. The article offers our perspectives on the experiment. We situate the course within the larger context of legal education, the first-year curriculum, criminal law teaching and scholarship, and professional socialization. The content and delivery of the course was linked to the three overarching objectives of first-year courses: 1) the introduction of a substantive subject area; 2) the introduction of legal reasoning, the nature of law and the legal system; and 3) the exploration of professional identity and purpose. The article examines each of these objectives from both a theoretical and practical perspective and connects each objective with course delivery choices and strategies. It concludes with personal reflections on the strengths and weaknesses of this ongoing teaching initiative.
Keywords: criminal law, education, legal education, teaching, social justice, critical perspectives, feminism, teaching
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