Can We Measure the Relationship Between Teaching and Scholarship in Law Schools

Today, the ELS Blog is pleased to host a one-day forum on the relationship (or lack of relationship) between teaching and scholarship in law schools.  The forum is prompted by a recent empirical study by Benjamin Barton of University of Tennessee Law, which has received a lot of play in the blogosphere (see, e.g., Comglomerate, Prawfsblawg, Legal Theory Blog, Leiter, and Stuart Buck).   The buzz, of course, is focused on Ben's primary finding that there is no correlation between effective teaching and scholarship.

This topic reflects a long-running debate within the legal academy, most of which occurred without data.  In 1998, Jim Lindgren and Allison Nagelberg began to fill this void with a small scale study based of faculty from three relatively elite law schools which documented a modest positive correlation (.20) between scholarly productivity (as measured by citation counts) and teaching (as measured by student evaluations).  See Are Scholars Better Teachers? 73 Chi. Kent L. Rev. 823 (1998).   Barton's study is much broader in scope.  It includes four years of teaching evaluations for 623 faculty members at 19 ABA-approved law schools.  In addition, it includes five discrete measures of scholarly output:  academic-oriented books and articles; practice-oriented books and articles; total publications; citations per year; and total citations.

As Ben notes in his conclusion, the lack of a empirical relationship between teaching and scholarship creates quite a quandary for legal education, especially as law school competition increasingly takes the form of attracting and retaining more productive scholars.   

To probe this issue further, the ELS blog is pleased to welcome Ben Barton, who will open the forum with some additional remarks on this research.  To provide commentary on Ben's study, we also welcome Jeffrey Evans Stake (Indiana Law), who is particularly well-suited for this forum.  In addition to his innovative work on law school rankings (see, e.g.,  81 Ind. L. J. 229 (2006); 80 St. John's L. Rev. 301 (2006)) and the Rankings Game website, Jeff is an award-winning teacher who has done extensive service work to improve the teaching evaluation process. 

Comments

[Work From Home]

Very nice article posted.....Evaluations reflect only the student's comfort level.

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[Frederick Hamilton]

Mortimer Adler had it correct when he stated all learning takes place in the learners mind. Teaching may facilitate but it is nothing "makes a student learn". Great teaching is motivating interest in the learners mind. Also as Adler points out in "The Paideia Proposal: An Educational Manifesto" there must be three types of teaching to be effective: coaching, Socratic and didactic. Most schools (K-12, College, Law, Medical, et al) are all didactic teaching. As Adler states a "mind numbing" education. I would agree that great scholarship and great teaching although not mutually exclusive probably don't go together very often. Ergo the publish or perish mindset is also a mind numbing school.

[Thomas E Plank]

I think that my colleague Ben Barton has shown that there is no correlation between scholarship and teacher evaluations. Ben has mentioned that there is some research corrolating teaching quality and teaching evaluations, but as I understand it, that research does not include teacing in law school. Law school teaching has little to do with conveying information, unlike undergraduate education. My own view is that student evaluations of the effectiveness of law school teaching is totally worthless. Often, in my view, evaluations reflect only the student's comfort level.

Indeed, when my evaluations are high, I worry that I have failed my students. When my evaluations have been low, it is usually because I have not been "clear" or have not explained enough. Often, however, performance on the exams have been better when the evaluations have been lower.

[On the other hand, smaller classes lead to higher evaluations and better performance.]