Over the past decades, legal education at European universities has undergone a noticeable transformation through the emergence of European Law Schools and European legal education more broadly. This development sparked the debate about the place European legal education occupies within national legal systems and what kind of a jurist it aims to create. This contribution examines the development of European legal education and the place it occupies — and may come to occupy — within universities in the EU, with particular attention to its implications for professional identity and the EU as a whole.

On the one hand, the emergence of European legal education is a response to the increasing transnationalisation of law, including the free movement of workers (among which jurists) and contemporary legal questions such as migration. Within this context, programmes focusing on creating ‘global jurists’ or ‘European jurists’ have increased in number. Contrary to nationally oriented studies, these programmes utilise a comparative law approach to familiarise students with several jurisdictions at once, while heavily emphasising academic and legal skills.

On the other hand, the functioning of European legal education within national university systems raises important questions. These include for instance, if and how graduates should be able to obtain national legal qualifications and whether global/European jurists are perhaps in fact more desirable for domestic systems. This highlights an ongoing debate whether national systems should indeed aim for European legal education, or whether domestic legal education can – or should – retain its current structure.

To explore these issues, the Netherlands presents itself as a particularly fitting case study. Given its international orientation and its innovative approaches to legal education, such as Maastricht University’s European Law School, the Dutch context offers insight into the impact of European legal education within a national system. Drawing on existing literature and an analysis of the Dutch legal education system, this contribution examines how European legal education is structured, which educational and professional trajectories it enables, and what kind of global/European jurist it produces. Throughout this analysis, attention is paid to which actors benefit from European legal education and which may be disadvantaged by it. Ultimately, the paper contributes to a more nuanced understanding of European legal education and its role in shaping the future of the legal profession in Europe.

This is a paper that reflects over my role as a facilitator in my students learning processes. What sparked writing this paper was a question I received from one my students. When do you feel most present and purposeful in your work as a lecturer, and how can you create more of those moments? The answer I gave was: feeling that I’ve done something meaningful could be when I see how a student has developed from the first assignment in a course to the last, or when I supervise a student writing an independent project - when I see how you my students develop your academic skills and, many times, how you begin to believe in your academic skills more. This when it goes well for you, that is meaningful to me. However, this answer this is based upon 20+ years of teaching within higher education, what is of interest to me then is how did I end up with this answer?

What is it then in my role as facilitator in my students’ learning processes that engages with students and make our time together joyful and interesting for all of us? I will explore some teaching practices such as playing role games, writing reflection journals, doing study trips, and how I engage with students in lectures as well as when it comes to examination.

This study reflects on the development of European Studies as a field of pedagogic practice within the initial teachers training in Greece. Despite teachers are considered as the backbone of the European Education Area the importance of the introduction of EU studies within higher education curricula, it has been overlooked. Data for this research were collected through a questionnaire administered to a large sample of undergraduate students (n = 1,000) from 23 pedagogical departments at nine public universities across Greece. The study employed descriptive analysis as the primary method for evaluating the research objectives. Results show that the vast majority of participants, possess limited knowledge of EU institutions, and lack familiarity with innovative pedagogical methods for teaching about the EU. Most participants reported minimal involvement in European programmes, except for Erasmus+. Additionally, participants consistently valued the importance of acquiring EU-related knowledge during their studies and integrating EU material into their future teaching practice. The findings indicate a disconnect between participants' educational needs and the current curricular offerings on the EU within initial teacher education, highlighting the need for systematic and concurrent reinforcement of curricula.

Three research questions animate the project. First, do faculty perceive effective teaching to be an important part of how they are evaluated? No institution will declare that teaching is not a central focus of university life. Unit guidelines and faculty handbooks often go to great lengths to emphasize that teaching effectiveness is among the primary bases – if not the primary basis – on which faculty are evaluated. But do faculty believe this to be true? Do they perceive effective teaching is genuinely important to how they are evaluated? Do department and/or institution policies genuinely encourage teaching effectiveness? More importantly, is effective teaching rewarded? These are questions about which we know almost nothing.

Second, how do faculty view the role of SoTL as a resource to become more effective teacher? Do faculty actively engage SoTL scholarship to improve their teaching? If so, how much and how often do they look to this scholarship? More broadly, do faculty perceive that SoTL as a body of scholarship is valued by colleagues or institutional leadership – either as tool to enhance teaching or as the object of scholarly inquiry? Again, these are questions about which we know very little.

Third, are there systematic differences across types of faculty and/or types of institutions in how faculty perceive the importance of teaching and the role of SoTL? Anecdotal evidence suggests there may be. For instance, conventional wisdom suggests that teaching-focused liberal arts colleges value teaching and SoTL role more than research-focused institutions. However, though there may be a shared sense that this is so, there is no systematic data to substantiate the received wisdom. This project seeks to address that.

Answers to these questions will be adduced from the results of faculty surveys administered to Political Science faculty across the United States in 2012, 2017, and 2023. The survey is the largest and longest-running series of its type in the discipline. In the most recent iteration (2023), over 5,000 faculty were invited to participate, and almost 1,000 responses were received. The responses are the best indicator we have about how the discipline feels about these issues. In addition to sharing data related to the three above questions, the presentation will include an interactive element where attendees will share their impressions on the data and explore its meaning. We will also discuss opportunities to expand the survey to other national contexts – within Europe and beyond.