Formational Pedagogies

At the 2012 Educating Tomorrow's Lawyers Conference, many presenters emphasized the importance of placing students in learning environments where they are encouraged to act in the role of a lawyer and given room to identify and address ethical quandaries that often arise in practice, such as clinics and simulations. It is through this combination of role-play, confrontation, identification, and reflection that formation of professional identity is most likely to occur in studenta. A key pedagogy, then, is to intentionally draw students through teaching situations or “guided sequences.” Here, Professor David Thomson of the University of Denver Sturm College of Law discusses the process of and value in using "guidance sequences."