Tripping over thresholds: a reflection on legal andragogy

This lecture was delivered as the 2015 Annual Lord Upjohn Association of Law Teachers lecture. It explored the nature of law as a learned discipline, using the process of leading the review group responsible for writing the 2015 QAA Law Subject Benchmark Statement, but within a broader framework of threshold concepts. It considered how the process of learning the law can irreversibly transform the learner, and included a examination of liminal spaces (troublesome places in learning) in law and the teacher’s role in promoting the students’ transformation and in facilitating (nudging) their successful crossing of the legal learning threshold and meeting a learning outcome. The lecture set legal learning primarily in the undergraduate context in England and Wales, but it also included references to graduateness (in law and more widely) and commented on the place of an undergraduate law degree in the legal regulatory landscape.