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

摘要

Learning law and ethics is not easy. Just ask your students. Yet for those of us who have become proficient in navigating the theories, methods, and materials of the fields, this reality is often forgotten. Because experts process, organize, and access their knowledge differently than novices, not only do we understand more than our students, we have difficulty seeing the gap in knowledge between them and us. This frustrates learning goals and widens the very gap we are trying to close. The pedagogical tool of modeling—when an expert demonstrates a mental action through metaexplanation—offers a solution. This article, in an attempt to foster modeling in business law and ethics classes, sets forth the problems posed by the expert-novice knowledge gap and the theory of modeling as a curative strategy. It also provides a series of modeling exercises specific to business law and ethics classes, but that may be easily adapted to other courses. While modeling is but one step in the process of effective teaching, it is an important one in the quest to make experts out of all our students.