Doherty, Michael and Bleasdale, Lydia (2025) Finding connection and joy through a SoTL community of practice : the impact of the Connecting Legal Education network. In: EuroSoTL Conference 2025, 2025-06-17 - 2025-06-20, University of Groningen. (Unpublished)
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Connection is at the core of the Connecting Legal Education network established in March 2020 as a response to the global pandemic. Five years on, it is now a fully formed international community of practice of over 365 legal education scholars. In the spirit of the conference theme, this paper focuses on the potential of (largely) online discipline-based communities of practice in building capacity for SoTL work, in connecting people who often feel institutionally isolated and in enjoying a sense of solidarity with others who are curious about educational development. The aims of the paper are threefold. First, to chart the success, growth and joy of Connecting Legal Education (CLE), specifically what makes it unique as a community of practice. Second, illustrate how CLE champions educators committed to the scholarship of teaching and learning in legal education. In this respect, CLE has become a space to support SOTL scholars with career progression and promotion but also a space to push back and challenge problematic narratives that have become entrenched around SoTL being lesser than and not real ‘research’. Thirdly, we focus on the theme of doing things differently. Here, we share a loose manifesto of how we went about creating the ‘Celebrating Connection’ CLE Fest in 2024 – a legal education conference with a difference. This paper will be of particular interest to those seeking to make connections and build spaces or communities of practice/solidarity for educators passionate about teaching and learning, whatever the discipline.