Research-led Teaching, Vehicular Ideas and the Feminist Judgments Project

This paper reports on the results of a survey of law teachers that asked about their understanding of research-led teaching. It argues that the findings of the survey suggest that research-led teaching is a vehicular idea. It explains the emergence of vehicular ideas as a consequence of the discrediting of the intellectual as authority figure producing definitive oracular ideas. Instead the intellectual acts as mediator, producing ideas that provoke conversations and facilitate problem solving. Vehicular ideas are criticised as insubstantial, depoliticising and failing to challenge dominant neo-liberal norms, but they are also recognised – like all ideas – as potentially disruptive to the status quo. The paper then argues that the Feminist Judgments Project is a useful example of a research project that can give substance to research-led teaching. However, what is required is a conscious and collaborative dialogue between researchers and teachers and a commitment to outcomes that promote critical thinking on the part of students.