Comprehensive Research and Practical Development of Teaching Methodologies for Professional Law Schools

我们首先试图建立一个连贯的学生评价系统。就法律系而言，在日本的大学里引入学生评估是一个相当新的现象，通常是由不是该领域专家的法学教授准备和实施的。因此，绝对有必要让专家参与进来，特别是那些专门研究社会学和心理学的专家。我们在一位社会学家和一位心理学家的帮助下组织了一系列的学生评估，评估结果详见最终报告。在专业的法学院，传统的“讲课”式的课程几乎不存在，即教授在讲台上讲话，学生除了听他/她说话之外什么都不做。因此，我们试图开发一种新类型的教科书，以适应专业法律学校课堂上使用的特定类型的教学方法。我们已出版了数本这类教科书(详见下文)，而专为法律专业学校编写的尚未出版的教材，亦会部分转载在最后报告内。我们亦曾多次进行调查，以了解教授和学生对教学方法的看法，调查结果亦详载在最后报告内。

We first tried to create a coherent system of student evaluation. The introduction of the student evaluation is rather a recent phenomenon in Japanese universities as far as law departments are concerned, and it is prepared and carried out, usually, by law professors, who are not specialists in the field. It is therefore absolutely necessary to get specialists involved, particularly those who specialize in sociology and psychology. We have organised a series of student evaluation with the help of a sociologist and a psychologist, the result of which is detailed in the final report.In professional law schools, traditional "lecture"-style classes, where a professor speaks from the platform and students do nothing but listen to him/her, are almost non-existent. We therefore tried to develop a new type of textbooks, which are adapted to particular types of teaching methodologies employed in the classrooms of professional law schools. We have published several such textbooks (listed below), and unpublished teaching materials specially developed for professional law schools are partly reprinted in the final report.We have also conducted several surveys for the purpose of understanding professors' and students' perception of teaching methodologies, the result of which is also detailed in the final report.