Galloway, K --- "Refreshed in the tropics: developing curriculum using a thematic lens" [2012] LegEdDig 39; (2012) 20(3) Legal Education Digest 20

• Refreshed in the tropics: developing curriculum using a thematic lens

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Refreshed in the tropics: developing curriculum using a thematic lens

K Galloway

Journal of the Australasian Law Teachers Association, Vol 4, 2011, pp 119-128

Since 2009, JCU has been undertaking a university-wide refresh of its curricula, supported by a grant from the Australian Government, Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. While the refresh was framed around a number of curricular elements, the underlying rationale was enhancing the university’s distinctive role as Australia’s university for the tropics. As lawyers, it is perhaps of interest that, unlike most other Australian universities, our role as the university for the tropics is embedded in s 5 of the James Cook University Act 1997 (Qld), which identifies our functions as (amongst other things): (1) to provide facilities for study and research generally and, in particular, in subjects of special importance to the people of the tropics; and (2) to encourage study and research generally and, in particular, in subjects of special importance to the people of the tropics.

The School of Law project is funded from the University-wide project, and revolves around finding a distinctive identity within these curricular elements and the tropical focus in particular. This has provided the opportunity for the JCU LLB to develop a distinct identity amongst LLBs nationally, that is reflected throughout a deliberately-designed curriculum through a ‘thematic lens’ of tropicality.

These themes and issues, the adoption of discipline standards for law, the new quality standards regime, increasing competition and the findings of the Bradley Report together represent the contemporary higher education landscape within which a small regional law school is expected to compete. Distinctiveness, at the foundation of the JCU curriculum refresh, represents the interface between government policy, market objectives and curriculum design – the creation of a marketable ‘product’ that fulfils a policy of universal higher education and quality standards, while representing best practice in curriculum design.

In spite of the introduction of critical thinking and contextual approaches to law, contemporary developments in teaching and learning, and the evolution of approaches to teaching law, the law degree remains largely content-based. It could not be argued, however, that the law curriculum is any more dictated by its accrediting body than other professional disciplines and, to this extent, there should be nothing to obstruct the development of innovative and distinctive curricula. The possibility for a distinctive law curriculum and the means by which this is achieved seems to depend on one’s perspective.

In terms of distinctiveness, Johnstone and Vigaendra cited Australian law schools’ responses to finding a ‘niche’ or being distinctive. While some sought to ‘develop their own particular vision of legal education’, others described ‘a long-sustained approach to legal education’.

In their study, Johnstone and Vignaendra noted that, ‘for most schools, the concern is with distinguishing themselves within their local (city or state) market, rather than nationally’. In today’s arguably even more global marketplace (even for law degrees and law graduates), differentiation takes a different form and universities are being put not just on the national but the international stage. It is suggested that differentiation based simply on marketing is not sufficient if we seek to provide a program with intellectual integrity. Any claims about curriculum in a marketing sense must therefore result from a deliberately-designed program. It is likewise suggested that differentiation is entirely possible within the accredited LLB curriculum and that, unlike some may suspect, a law degree and standards imposed upon it do not constrain a law school or its students to a singular national curriculum.

Hicks provides a cogent argument about the need to understand the ‘unifying potential of curriculum, defined broadly.’ Relevantly here, he identifies how this approach can ‘re-position or re-shape disciplines and discipline based courses’ – the very intent of the JCU curriculum refresh. In particular, the genesis of the LLB refresh project lay in the observation that while academic staff may ‘cover’ the graduate attributes and curricular foci – internationalisation, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander perspectives, etc. – there was no systematic approach to the design of a unified ‘program’ that brought together not just content or an approach to teaching, but the diverse elements of contemporary teaching and learning practice and ‘key issues in higher education’.

Importantly also, the idea of a ‘program’ implies something bigger than the directly assessed subject or unit – what has been described as a ‘broad’ curriculum. In Hicks’ paper, this reflects the ‘how’ – the nature and quality of the learning opportunities provided, which on a curriculum-focused student learning model, would ‘integrate into other aspects of the development and delivery of the learning opportunity’.

While there appears to be little in the literature, this approach to curriculum design draws on the work of Erickson. Erickson uses the context of academic standards in US schools to explore the use of concepts – or a thematic lens – in curriculum design. She observes that the pressure of meeting academic standards is high but that there is a tendency to interpret ‘raising standards ’as ‘learning more content’, but that ‘the standards and newer assessments assume that students will demonstrate complex thinking, deeper understanding and sophisticated performance’.

Erickson could be describing the move towards discipline standards in the Australian tertiary context and on this basis her proposed solution to meeting national standards provides inspiration for the means by which the LLB might evolve from the traditional focus on content while incorporating elements of contemporary curriculum design.

Of particular resonance is Erickson’s description of the structure of knowledge and traditional curriculum in terms of facts and topics as lower order thinking skills – content. Acknowledging that these are important, she illustrates that above these sit concepts and theory as higher order analytical skills or approaches.

Embracing a wider definition of curriculum is likely to be necessary to respond to the new regulatory framework. The recent TEQSA Discussion Paper for example suggests that teaching standards ‘include curriculum design, the quality of teaching, (and) student learning support ...’ In addition the increasing complexity and layers of reporting (accreditation, graduate attributes, standards to name a few) will require us to think of curriculum in a more complex way.

In assessing the way in which the JCU curriculum could be distinctive, the first part of the LLB refresh looked at the approaches to the LLB curriculum taken by a number of other Australian law schools. The project was interested in exploring how other law schools represented their degrees to the public in terms of the JCU refresh themes.

Initially a desktop review of Australian law school websites identified the extent to which law schools appeared to embody the curriculum refresh key themes. These law schools were narrowed down to those that represented their degrees in terms of the highest number of the JCU refresh themes. Those that were ultimately selected also delivered an LLB in a context more aligned with that of JCU (by size, demographic of cohort, resource base and location).

A review of Deans’ welcomes and course overviews located on the selected law schools’ websites revealed that each LLB was represented in terms of a particular focus. While each law school could claim a different focus, there appeared to be four primary approaches taken: emphasis on discipline focus; practical skills; service to community; and external cohort.

Reflecting the basis for selection of the law schools reviewed, these four approaches to curriculum are reflected in the web presence of each law school in terms of the JCU curriculum refresh themes.

The project team had some considerable discussion about where any ‘gap’ might lie, in terms of JCU’s curriculum priorities. It was observed that in the websites surveyed, there was little if any mention of ‘sustainability’ within the curriculum. Consequently, the proposed outcome of the next phase of the project is to adopt and embed ‘sustainability’ in all awards offered in the School to provide it with both distinctiveness but also the potential to represent the tropics within the curriculum. This phase of the project is occurring now. This prompts the question, however, of how this might feed in to the overarching focus of the tropics. This would require representing JCU’s unique tropical focus through the conceptual device of sustainability. To do so requires an appreciation of what the tropics might mean within our discipline, and a framework for a thematic lens in curriculum.

It is highly unlikely that any lawyer, even those who have practised or do practise in the tropics, would find any meaning in ‘tropical law’. The common understanding of the tropics focuses primarily on a location between the Tropics of Capricorn and Cancer – a location that does not represent any particular jurisdiction known to the law. To find such a meaning, a review of literature in the field of cultural geography reveals a variety of much broader and richer meanings of the tropics.

In the same way that the ‘north-south divide’ is no longer truly representative of a location literally north and south of the equator, so too can the tropics be untethered from its literal geographical location. Arnold for example identifies tropicality as a ‘discursive representation of the tropics’ and that it embraces a ‘variety of cultural tropes’. Livingstone builds on this to point out that ‘tropicality ... is as much a conceptual as a physical space’. The notion of the tropics as a ‘geography of the mind’ is a useful starting point for developing a ‘thematic lens’ to inform a distinctive curriculum.

Starting at Erickson’s highest conceptual level of ‘theory’ is the tropics. As a concept, the tropics has a deep cultural underpinning grounded in European notions of self. From the time of the ancient Greeks, the climate of the tropics was perceived as hostile and its peoples exotic. The tropics was simultaneously fecund and diverse, as well as degenerate, depraved, abnormal, foreboding, dangerous, deceptive and pestilent. It was a place of immorality where the white man (sic) would slip into indolence and sexual proclivity – a place to be tamed and controlled.

All this recognises that the tropics is so much more than a place.

The tropics of the mind is perhaps most influenced by Orientalism and Edward Said’s thinking about the discourse surrounding things oriental as a European positioning and creation of something that did not actually exist other than within the European mind.

And this is where the tropics takes on meaning as a conceptual lens for our curriculum – for the tropics is not only a literal place, but is also an idea that still encompasses exclusion and exploitation and ‘otherness’ in terms of a European hegemony. For JCU to become the university for the tropics involves engaging in teaching (and research) that seeks to counter this historical approach through a focus on countering the negative space of the idea, focusing instead on sustainability and representation of peoples of the tropics in their own terms.

In terms of the LLB, this means teaching and researching critically – challenging traditional parameters of colonialism and empire and focusing on models of sustainability in governance; economy and finance; community development; and the environment. The tropics viewed in this sense has potential to bring together diversity of experience and expertise of the law school’s academic staff and its subject program through a common narrative of the experience and vision of those from within the tropics, rather than that of those outside around the key organising principles of governance, economy, community and environment.

In terms of governance, public law subjects – foundations of law, administrative law, and constitutional law – would focus on sustainability through the concept of civil society, legitimacy of governance and systemic sustainability as the drivers of the selection of readings, of class activities and of assessment.

For private law – contract, torts, land law – likewise, sustainability of relationships and the balance between public and private, free market and social responsibility are tested through an understanding of the elements of contract, torts and the regulatory system of land ownership. Social justice – sustainability of community – can be built in to existing foundation subjects but also be represented in, for example, critical approaches to criminal law as well as elective subjects such as human rights.

In each case, the ‘content’ of a subject need not be changed. There is no suggestion of ‘fitting more in’ or ‘losing’ content. Nor is the aim of this conceptualisation to pigeonhole any particular subject within a rigid framework. Rather, it offers a conceptual or thematic underpinning from which each academic can make an informed and deliberate curriculum design decision in terms of their particular interest within their area. In doing so, the underlying conceptual basis affords a means by which each subject in the LLB interrelates with each other.

This wider view also affords an approach to knowledge and intellectual endeavour – one that reflects inclusiveness and rejects exploitation. In the first sense, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander knowledge should be represented in curriculum. In the latter sense, intellectual endeavour represents the coming together of the known and the imagined.

The distinctiveness agenda has been challenging for a professionally accredited degree. Observing and engaging in discussion with other law schools has in one sense affirmed our own practice without necessarily highlighting how we could do things differently. Overlaying a theoretical framework (Schiro’s) atop practical representations and descriptions of our (JCU) curricular dimensions assists in giving meaning to the distinctiveness agenda and highlighting the differences. But bringing in Erickson’s conceptual or thematic lens as a means of infusing a sense of overall purpose to the curriculum not only brings the elements of the law together, but also provides the opportunity for a depth of thinking and skills development that lends itself to the contemporary focus on a much broader education for our students.

Taking the thematic lens of the tropics in a conceptual rather than a literal (geographical) sense can provide a number of concepts through which to filter the LLB curriculum.

In looking to the history of peoples of the tropical world, ‘us’ and ‘them’, othering, stereotyping, devaluing of culture of indigenous peoples provides a context for exploring the sustainability of legal systems and of celebrating previously devalued ways of knowing such as indigenous ways of knowing, and the treatment of peoples by the law.

Our students report experiencing an atomistic degree where there is a lack of connection from one subject to the next. Through focus on a thematic lens, we have the opportunity to provide a meaning and context – a narrative and sense of place – that underpin learning and afford the opportunity for a connectedness with learning and the bigger picture of the law.

What this highlights is the importance of a considered and philosophical approach to curriculum development, advancing alignment of curricula in an authentic way. While this has the happy outcome of satisfying strategic direction, it likewise provides an exciting, legitimate and consistent focus for curriculum development.