Project Investigators
Professor Michael Hunter Schwartz
Washburn University School of Law
1700 SW College Ave., Room 309
Topeka, KS 66621
(785) 670-1666
michael.schwartz [at] washburn.edu
Professor Sophie M. Sparrow
Franklin Pierce Law Center
2 White Street
Concord, NH 03301
(603) 513-5205
ssparrow [at] piercelaw.edu
Professor Gerald Hess
Gonzaga University School of Law
PO Box 3528
Spokane, WA 99220-3528
(509) 313-3779
ghess [at] lawschool.gonzaga.edu
"Best Law Teachers"
Conference at Washburn
In 2011 or 2012, we hope to organize a conference at Washburn about the Best Law Teachers project. We will invite subjects to talk about their teaching and ask them to allow class sessions to be videotaped so conference participants can analyze and discuss what makes these teachers so effective. We will share our research results and encourage participants to discuss themes they perceive in those results.
What the Best Law Teachers Do
Introduction
Having signed a contract with Harvard University Press to publish What the Best Law Teachers Do in 2011, we have the extraordinary opportunity to conduct a law professor-focused, follow-up study to Ken Bain's wonderful What the Best College Teachers Do (Harvard University Press, 2004).
We have three goals:
- to find the best law teachers in America,
- to synthesize the principles by which they teach as an ethic to which I (and my colleagues in legal education) can aspire, and
- to share these principles and stories of these brilliant teachers.
We hope what we produce inspires you as much as Bain's work has inspired us. We have adopted Bain's qualitative methodology. We will
- solicit nominations,
- gather evidence of nominees' excellence,
- pare the list to the most extraordinary law teachers, and then
- visit law schools around the country, sitting in on classes, interviewing the nominees, and talking to focus groups of students and alumni.
We hope to complete our research and produce What the Best Law Teachers Do by the end of 2011.
On this web site, you will find
- a more detailed description of the project,
- an online form for submitting nominations,
- a list of nominees and what their nominators had to say about them,
- information about the teaching and learning resources that influenced this project,
- some information about our interest in teaching and learning, and
- additional information about this project.
Project Investigators
Michael Hunter Schwartz
Washburn University School of Law
1700 SW College Ave., Room 309
Topeka, KS 66621
(785) 670-1666
michael.schwartz [at] washburn.edu
Sophie M. Sparrow
Franklin Pierce Law Center
2 White Street
Concord, NH 03301
(603) 513-5205
ssparrow [at] piercelaw.edu
Gerald Hess
Gonzaga University School of Law
PO Box 3528
Spokane, WA 99220-3528
(509) 313-3779
ghess [at] lawschool.gonzaga.edu
