A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

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Teaching in the disciplines
understanding of material by having to explain their knowledge for peers, and
may be challenged on their understanding to an extent that may not happen in
tutor-led or mediated interactions. The group may also provide an environment
for more creative thinking, and for developing greater learner autonomy, selfconfidence
and motivation.
Building on curriculum development work begun in 2000, the Law Faculty at
QUT has developed a sophisticated assessment framework to demonstrate
achievement of what they describe as a set of ‘graduate capabilities’. The
framework focuses on embedding four areas of ‘social, relational and cultural
capability’ across the curriculum, namely oral communication skills, teamwork,
indigenous content and perspectives on law, and ethical knowledge and values.
The approach to teamwork at QUT is integrated across a range of core modules,
builds teamwork into classroom and independent learning activities and uses
different group assessment tasks. For example, in Corporate Law (in Year 3), the
major assessment task is a group assignment based on a teamwork portfolio
which is completed by groups operating both face to face and in a virtual learning
environment. Self- and peer evaluation of teamwork also forms part of the
assessment for this module. The module Law, Society and Justice (Year 1) assesses
teamwork via an oral group presentation. A formatively assessed Teamwork
Reflection Sheet is also provided to support learning in this module. Advanced
Research and Legal Reasoning (Year 4) requires students to work in groups to
produce a range of written documents, such as memoranda of legal advice, client
letters, and a client newsletter (Kift et al., 2006).
(Submission for Carrick Award led by Professor Sally Kift)
Using reflective narratives as assessment tools
The value of developing students’ capacity for reflection is widely acknowledged in
higher education theory and practice, particularly as part of a strategy of making
assessment more authentic. Assessment is authentic when the task has a degree of ‘realworld’
complexity, the learning it measures has value beyond the classroom and is (or
becomes in the process) personally meaningful to the learner. Authenticity is more likely
to be achieved where a variety of assessment mechanisms are deployed.
The use of reflective narrative in law has its origins in clinical legal education where it
draws substantially on the literature of ‘reflective practice’ (see Maughan and Webb,
1996). In this context it is not surprising that reflective narratives are most often cited in
the legal education as tools that are useful in the development of academic and practical
skills, such as research, writing and legal literacy, presentation skills, group working
(again), and so on. But its scope and value are broader than that. As Cowan (1999: 18)
observes, reflection occurs whenever a student ‘analyse[s] or evaluate[s] one or more
personal experiences and attempt[s] to generalise from that thinking’. It thus constitutes