Tort Law: How Should Tort be Taught? Utilizing Expertise and Telling Tales in an Innovative Law Curriculum

Abstract

The effects of widened participation in Higher Education (HE) in the UK are plain to see. The governmental response to a need for greater social justice and economic competitiveness has led to an influx of students from nontraditional backgrounds and under-represented social and cultural groups, with a growing trend of students entering universities from state schools, low participation neighbourhoods and lower socio-economic backgrounds (DFEE, 1998). Indeed, facilitation of the widening participation (WP) initiative (see Public Accounts Committee, 2008–2009) by law schools in the UK has witnessed increased access to law degree programmes by a much wider cross-section of the population with the removal of barriers to HE overcoming the elitism and exclusion of the past. With such radical changes to the make-up of the student body, law schools must re-assess who their students are, what academic skills they are likely to possess on commencement of their studies, how best to equip them with the requisite academic and legal skills to successfully navigate a law degree, and in what ways delivery of the curriculum can best serve a cohort of students who enter law schools from a wide variety of educational and intellectual vantage points.