Modeling the Message: Closing the Knowledge Gap in Business Law and Ethics Classes

Date01 June 2019
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1111/jlse.12091
Published date01 June 2019
Journal of Legal Studies Education
Volume 36, Issue 2, 159–188, Summer 2019
Modeling the Message: Closing
the Knowledge Gap in Business Law
and Ethics Classes
Todd Haugh
I. INTRODUCTION
Significant research exists regarding the difference between how experts
process and understand information compared to novices. Studies show that
experts who have acquired extensive knowledge in a subject area organize,
represent, and interpret information related to that subject in a way that
enhances their ability to remember, reason, and problem-solve.1The subject
matter novice simply does not possess those same abilities.
For example, in a study of expert and novice teachers, participants were
shown a videotaped class lesson. As they watched, both groups of teachers
were asked to relate aloud what they were seeing. The teachers’ responses
demonstrated a very different understanding of what had occurred during
the lesson. While both the novice and expert teachers were able to commu-
nicate the basics of the lesson, the experts were able to go much further,
quickly recognizing and articulating meaningful patterns and then situating
Assistant Professor of Business Law and Ethics, Indiana University, Kelley School of Business. I
would like to thank Jamie Prenkert, Eric Metzler, and Joan Middendorf, as well as members of
the Kelley School’s Teaching and Service Excellence Committee and Indiana University’s Center
for Innovative Teaching and Learning, for helpful comments on early drafts of this article and
constructive assessment of the author’s teaching practices. The title of this article is inspired by
the title of Scott Killingsworth’s article, Modeling the Message: Communicating Compliance Through
Organizational Values and Culture,25G
EO.J.LEGAL ETHICS 961 (2012), which discusses in part
how the teachings of behavioral science can be more effectively communicated to employees so
as to build positive corporate cultures.
1See generally,NATLRES.COUNCIL,HOW PEOPLE LEARN:BRAIN,MIND,EXPERIENCE,AND SCHOOL
31 (John D. Bransford et al. eds., 2000); SUSAN A. AMBROSE ET AL., HOW LEARNING WORKS:7
RESEARCH-BASED PRINCIPLES FOR SMART TEACHING 49–54 (2010).
C2019The Author
Journal of Legal Studies Education C2019Academy of Legal Studies in Business
159
160 Vol. 36 / The Journal of Legal Studies Education
them within larger pedagogical principles.2The experts’ knowledge was
“conditionalized”; that is, it reflected the context of applicability, as opposed
to the identification of isolated facts.3Thus, the expert teachers were able to
begin deconstructing the lesson, and problem-solving its shortcomings, at a
higher pace and at higher levels than the novices.4This exemplifies what is
known as the expert–novice knowledge gap.5
Closing the knowledge gap is, at base, what higher education is all about.
We as instructors, who are subject matter experts in our various fields, are
trying to raise our students’ level of expertise so they can more meaningfully
and efficiently solve domain-specific problems. At the end of our courses,
we want our students to be cognitively more like us than their old selves—
possessing conditionalized knowledge rather than only engaging in isolated
understanding.
Unfortunately, however, an expert simply conveying information to a
novice is not enough to close the knowledge gap. Without the same level of
subject matter expertise, the novice student is unable to make the connections
the expert instructor understands inherently. Put another way, the student
is not privy to the “mental actions the [instructor] is using to navigate” the
material.6As a result, the instructor and student talk (and think) past one
another. In an effort to close the knowledge gap, the expert is conveying
information to the novice; yet, the novice is unable to fully grasp it, ensuring
the knowledge gap remains.
While this problem is likely to occur in some degree in all courses, it
is particularly problematic in classes that introduce new skills or methods of
2See Donna S. Sabers et al., Differences Among Teachers in a Task Characteristic by Simultaneity, Multi-
dimensionality, and Immediacy,28A
M.EDUC.RES.J. 63 (1991).
3NATLRES.COUNCIL,supra note 1, at 43.
4Id. at 48.
5See Walter Swap et al., Using Mentoring and Storytelling to Transfer Knowledge in the Workplace,18
J. MGMT.INFO.SYS. 95, 101 (2001) (“Novices cannot be expected to leap directly to becoming
experts. All experts pass through levels of knowledge acquisition. In trades, one thinks of first
apprenticing, then becoming a journeyman, before attaining the status of a master violin maker
or plumber. Future concert pianists start as beginners, then reach intermediate and advanced
levels before becoming virtuosi. For mentors working with novices, the wide gap in knowledge
presents problems.”).
6JOAN MIDDENDORF &LEAH SHOPKOW,OVERCOMING STUDENT LEARNING BOTTLENECKS:DECODE
THE CRITICAL THINKING OF YOUR DISCIPLINE 64 (2018). This problem is exacerbated, often
unknowingly, by instructors who may have forgotten “what is easy and what is difficult for
students.” NATLRES.COUNCIL,supra note 1, at 44.

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