2017____________________________MEASURING CRITICAL THINKING SKILLS 21 transfer. 83 It blends three separate marking rubrics on critical thinking, one at each of the three levels of progression. These are the introductory, intermediate and advanced levels, which correspond with the first year, middle years and final year in a law program.While the focus of this article is upon the teaching of law in Australian law schools, it is hoped that the theoretical insights and practical suggestions presented in this article will be of relevance to legal educators beyond Australia, and to those seeking to teach critical thinking to students in a variety of academic and professional disciplines.83 Nathanson, above n 61, 191.
Ten insights into the nature of power and its relationship with law are derived from the work of Michel Foucault: (1) power is not a bad thing; (2) power cannot be abolished; (3) power is not monopolised by the powerful; (4) power is everywhere; (5) power always provokes resistance; (6) power shapes knowledge; (7) power determines truth; (8) law is a strategy of power; (9) law is only one of the many strategies of power; and (10) power and discourse are non-subjective.
In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic forced law schools to rapidly transition to remote delivery of their programs and to place a greater emphasis upon technology-enhanced learning. Those legal academics who were unfamiliar with this method of delivery were obliged to very quickly develop their digital skills to facilitate this transition. The outcomes of this transition were mixed: while most law schools managed to continue to deliver their programs during the pandemic, student feedback about the quality of the remote delivery was not always positive. Nevertheless, the emphasis upon remote delivery and technology-enhanced learning is likely to continue and even increase in the coming years. In this paper I interrogate the assumption that the rapid and obligatory transition to remote delivery that took place because of the pandemic will form a stable basis for further development of digital skills by legal academics. Drawing upon the notion of academic resistance as well as the well-known distinctions between surface and deep approaches to learning and intrinsic and extrinsic student motivation, I argue that the impact of the rapid and obligatory transition to remote delivery upon academic motivation, morale, and freedom exposes law schools to the risk that, without mindful intervention, the quality of technology-enhanced learning in law schools will be lower than optimal.
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