See One, Do One, Teach One: Dissecting the Use of Medical Education's Signature Pedagogy in the Law School Curriculum

• Publication year: 2010

Georgia State University Law Review

Volume 26 . ,

Article 4

Issue 2 Winter 2009

3-21-2012

See One, Do One, Teach One: Dissecting the Use of Medical Educations Signature Pedagogy in the Law School Curriculum

Christine N. Coughlin

Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalarchlve.gsu.edu/gsulr Part of the Law Commons

Recommended Citation

Coughlin, Christine N. (2009) "See One, Do One, Teach One: Dissecting the Use of Medical Education's Signature Pedagogy in the Law School Curriculum," Georgia State University Law Review: Vol. 26: Iss. 2, Article 4. Available at: http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/gsulr/vol26/iss2/4

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Law Publications at Digital Archive @ GSU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Georgia State University Law Review by an authorized administrator of Digital Archive @ GSU. For more information, please contact digitalarchive@gsu.edu.

SEE ONE, DO ONE, TEACH ONE: DISSECTING

THE USE OF MEDICAL EDUCATION'S SIGNATURE PEDAGOGY IN THE LAW SCHOOL

CURRICULUM

Christine N. Coughlin,* Lisa T. McElroy,** and Sandy C. Patrick***

Introduction

The Socratic dialogue is the predominant method used to teach law students to transfer their developing and emerging analytical powers into professional skills, such as effective research and writing.¹ While the Socratic dialogue does contribute to advancing and improving students' legal reasoning skills—helping them to better "think like a lawyer"—its use in the law school curriculum is naturally limited because of the mix of theory and skills taught in legal education. With the recent publication of the Best Practices for Legal Education² (the Best Practices Report), and the Carnegie Report for

Copyright © 2009 by Christine N. Coughlin, Lisa T. McElroy, and Sandy C. Patrick

* Professor and Director of Legal Research and Writing, Wake Forest University School of Law; Wake Forest University Center for Bioethics, Health, and Society. Professor Coughlin thanks her research assistants, Bue McNeely and Katrina Schaffhouser, for their assistance and patience, and Associate Deans Sid Shapiro and Ron Wright, and Professors Mark Hall and Nancy King for their support of interdisciplinary research, scholarship, and teaching.

** Associate Professor of Law, the Earle Mack School of Law at Drexel University. Professor McElroy thanks her research assistant, Drew Coursin, Interim Director of the Drexel Law Library Peter Egler, and Electronic Services Librarian Keith Berthrong for their research assistance with this article; law professors David Cohen, Miriam Weismann, Terry Seligmann, and Emily Zimmerman for their helpful comments on previous drafts of this article; and the Earle Mack School of Law at Drexel University for its financial support of the underlying research.

*** Professor of Legal Analysis and Writing, Lewis & Clark Law School. Professor Patrick thanks her research assistant, Robert McCrea.

1. E.g., Steven A. Childress, The Baby and the Bathwater: Salvaging a Positive Socratic Method, 7 okla. city U. L. Rev. 333, 334-35 (1982); June Cicero, Piercing the Socratic Veil: Adding an Active Learning Alternative in Legal Education, 15 WM. mitchell L. rev. 1011, 1011-12 (1989); Lani Guinier et al., Becoming Gentlemen: Women's Experiences at One Ivy League Law School, 143 U. pa. L. rev. 1, 99 (1994) (describing a study at the University of Pennsylvania Law School which found that women and men may find the Socratic method alienating and intimidating); Susan Katcher, Legal Training in the United States: A Brief History, 24 Wis. int'l L.J. 335, 356-58 (2006).

2. Roy Stuckey et al., Best Practices for Legal Education (2007).

361

362 GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 26:2

the Advancement of Teaching³ (the Carnegie Report), law professors today have an unprecedented opportunity to consider and adopt pedagogies that have been successfully used in other professional disciplines that integrate professional skills and theory in their professional training programs. In this article, we focus specifically on the "see one, do one, teach one" approach used in medical education because of its broad potential applicability in legal education, especially insofar as it seeks to hone students' inductive and deductive analytical skills. Because medical students and law students develop early professional reasoning skills in parallel ways,⁴ successful medical school pedagogy may be particularly applicable to the law school setting.

While legal education offers myriad potential uses for the "see one, do one, teach one" approach, this article dissects the signature pedagogy by focusing on the use of simulation and samples, active learning exercises, and peer teaching opportunities as a corollary to using visualization, application, and demonstration in the medical context. This article explicitly guides legal educators through the process of implementing the methodology and addresses potential concerns that law professors may raise when considering adopting some or all of the "see one, do one, teach one" pedagogy in the form of "see many, do many, teach many." This article will conclude that utilizing the "see one, do one, teach one" methodology from medical education in law schools will accomplish two main objectives: (1) it will help students engage with course material on a deeper analytical level, allowing them to internalize theory and skill and transfer that knowledge to another legal problem; and (2) it will provide context for the students, allowing them to recognize the breadth of a legal concept and how the individual pieces they are learning fit together as a whole.⁵ Accordingly, borrowing the signature "see one, do one,

3. William M. Sullivan et al., Educating Lawyers: Preparation for the Profession of Law (2007).

4. See Stefan H. Krieger, The Development of Legal Reasoning Skills in Law Students: An Empirical Study, 56 J. legal educ. 332,351-53 (2006).

5. See Carol McCrehan Parker, Writing Throughout the Curriculum: Why Law Schools Need It and How to Achieve It, 76 Neb. L. Rev. 561, 567-68 (1997).

2010) SEE ONE, DO ONE, TEACH ONE 363

teach one" pedagogy from medical education will ultimately help students better learn the foundational skills of lawyering and bridge the gap between law school and the practice of law.

I. A Brief History: The Emergence of the "See One, Do One, Teach One" Pedagogy and the Reform of American Medical

Education

"See one, do one, teach one" is the "traditional format for acquiring medical skills based on a three-step process: visualize, perform and [demonstrate]."⁶ Specifically,

See One, Do One, Teach One is a useful strategy that combines the benefits of different learning styles. This process comes from the medical model. Medical students typically first see someone put on a splint, then put on a splint, then teach someone else to put on a splint. The process involves them in seeing the skill modeled, doing it themselves, and then teaching the skill to another student. Maximum learning results when the learner goes through all three of these activities.⁷

Although its origin is unknown, the maxim is an accurate way to describe the "goal of producing critical thinkers [that] remains the primary objective of medical educators today." "See one, do one, teach one" is effective because it provides a mix of "analytic thinking, skillful practice, and wise judgment on which each profession rests."⁹ The maxim is thus optimal for educating professionals in settings where theory and skill necessarily coincide. Medical education excels in "bringing the teaching of skills into

6. McGraw-Hill Concise Dictionary of Modern Medicine (2002), available at http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com.

7. Chick Moorman & Thomas Haller, See One, Do One, Teach One, EzineArticles.COM, June 14,2006, http://ezinearticles.com/?See-One-Do-One-Teach-One&id=219888.

8. Kenneth m. Ludmerer, Learning to Heal: The Development of American Medical Education 5 (The Johns Hopkins University Press 1996) (1985) [hereinafter Ludmerer, Learning to Heal].

9. Sullivan et al., supra note 3, at 27.

364 GEORGIA STATE UNIVERSITY LAW REVIEW [Vol. 26:2

increasingly close contact with the teaching of the basic sciences that underlie medical practice ... [and] recogni[zing] that medical science is best taught in the context of medical practice, with integral connections between the fundamental knowledge base and the complex skills of professional practice."¹⁰

Medical education and the "see one, do one, teach one" philosophy have been criticized" for several reasons—among them, the method's reliance on students' learning curve when performing procedures on live patients,¹² the publish or perish culture where research dominates medical teaching, and the increasing use of technology to research disease on a molecular or nano level, rather than on a whole patient level.¹⁴ However, these concerns can be overcome in the medical context and, perhaps more easily, in the law school context, as well. In fact, some medical scholars recently opined that:

Although the dictum "see one, do one, teach one" may have characterized the way in which clinical skills were learned in the past, it is now clear that for training in skills to be effective, learners at all levels must have the opportunity to compare their

10. Mat 192.

11. Molly Cooke et al., American Medical Education 100 Years After the Flexner Report, 355 NEW eng. J. med. 1339, 1342 (Sept. 28, 2006). See also Laura Lin & Bryan A. Liang, Reforming Residency: Modernizing Education and Training to Promote Quality and Safety in Healthcare, 38 J. health L. 203, 221 (2005) ("'See one, do one, teach one' has been a long-standing mantra of medical education. Although this mantra has been repeated for years, it does not create an optimal training or learning environment.") (internal quotation marks omitted); Lars Noah, Medical Education and Malpractice: What's the Connection?, 15 health matrix ...