The first session of the third edition of the Law in Crisis Series captioned Reform of Teaching and Assessment in Legal Education in Ghana was held on Thursday, 12th November 2020 at 01:00 PM (GMT).

The discussion took place on Zoom and was streamed live on Facebook with active participation and interaction across the globe.

The webinar was aimed at discussing the quality of legal education and what should be done to ensure effective teaching and learning, what should go into a good curriculum assessment design and practical reality the law schools face.

The webinar was moderated by Mr. Kenneth Ghartey; Lecturer at the University of Ghana School of Law. The panel comprised Prof. Lydia A. Nkansah; Dean of the Faculty of Law, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Pio Dr. Atudiwe P. Atupare; Dean of the Faculty of Law, University of Cape Coast, Coomerene Rodrigo; Teaching and Learning Developer, Lancaster University Ghana and Katherine Aglobitse; Vice President, Law Students’ Union, University of Ghana School of Law.

Prof. Nkansah initiated the conversation by giving the historical context of the evolution of the present structure of legal education in Ghana. She highlighted that right after independence, the nation recognised the need for formal legal training within Ghana.

Thus, the need for legal technocrats to man the various agencies of the country that required legal advice. In 1958, the University of Ghana thus established a Law Department. Soon thereafter, the Ghana School of Law was set up by the General Legal Council to offer professional legal training mainly to civil servants in the country. Both schools were being run simultaneously.

This, she said, was done to give room for the production of a large number of lawyers in the country, to give opportunity to interested citizens who were not privileged to travel outside and to produce a lot of lawyers to counter the elitist foreign-trained lawyers who predominantly made up the political opposition of Dr. Kwame Nkrumah at the time.

Prof. Nkansah pointed out that there were first considerations to introduce students to liberal arts education before introducing them to legal education. The plan to implement the first stage of liberal arts education did not materialise because Dean Harvey of University of Ghana’s Law Department was deported from Ghana. She further classified the ideologies that were adopted during the legal education regime at the time. She outlined these as the instrumentalist ideology and humanistic ideology. Thus, the instrumentalists were of the view that lawyers should be trained as technicians. This is because law is a tool to affect change. On the other hand, Prof. Harvey was of the view that legal education should not be reduced to apprenticeship and so lawyers should go through liberal arts education and top it up with professional studies.

She added that the end goal of legal education is to produce lawyers. Therefore, lessons should be founded on skill and purpose-based learning.

On the issue of the constraints faced by law schools in Ghana, Pio Dr. Atupare emphasised that lawyers who are employed should be scrutinised and given a field in their area of expertise.

He stated that students should be disciplined and serious with their studies. He pointed out that assessment and evaluation of lecturers by students should be taken seriously in making future decisions.

Lecturers must also understand the sociological and psychological aspects of their students. They should give room for good interactions and create platforms to address the challenges. Again, Pio Dr. Atupare highlighted that lecturers should engage in more research work to make informed decisions on the courses they teach. To equally motivate teachers, he advised that lecturers should be given adequate incentives. Lecturers should also combine formative and summative teaching methods for assessment and evaluation of their students. This, he said, will improve the teaching, learning and assessment of legal education.

Coomerene Rodrigo explained the nature of constructive alignment in the teaching, learning and assessment structural design. She stated that law schools have to connect desired learning outcomes by constructively aligning teaching objectives to assessment objectives. She threw more light on a point first made by Pio Dr. Atupare and clarified that the distinction between research and teaching is that, research informs teaching while teaching informs research. Ms. Rodrigo added that two types of curricula existed namely enacted and experienced. Consequently, lecturers should create a curriculum based on their past experiences, as well as use student feedback to inform the curriculum. She concluded by highlighting that since students do not learn the same way, lecturers should avoid imparting knowledge the same way.

Ms. Aglobitse in giving the student perspective on the subject matter agreed with most of the points raised by Pio Dr.Atupare especially the point that had to do with lecturer interaction with students and understanding the background of students. As claimed by her, most lecturers have a nonchalant attitude regarding students’ understanding of what is being taught. Thus, they end up “lecturing” (literally) rather than having a discussion where the students’ understanding is taken into consideration. She underscored the need for law lecturers to explore other forms of assessment which develop students’ skills and potentials in terms of public speaking, presentation, research, writing and leadership skills. Additionally, Ms. Aglobitse urged lecturers not to assess students largely on their ability to memorise lecture slides or notes, among others. She brought to light the lack of audio-visuals in teaching. She reiterated Ms. Rodrigo’s point that students have different ways of assimilating information and so it was crucial for lecturers to actually know their students and match that with the teaching methods which would be most effective.

The first session of the third edition of the Law in Crisis Series generated engagements on University of Ghana School of Law’s social media platforms. A total of 341 people attended the session via Zoom whilst 5937 people engaged on Facebook. Participants had the opportunity to ask questions through Zoom.

The Law in Crisis Series Zoom Seminars is organised by the University of Ghana School of Law with support from Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ). The next session comes off on Thursday 19th November 2020 at 01:00 PM (GMT) and would explore Gender and Politics: Women’s Political Status and Representation in Ghana.