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Prepare Your Jurors to be Teachers

By Dr. Ken Broda Bahm:

Apple - Chalk - Teaching - School

I’ve known this since my days as a college professor: If you really want to learn something, then try teaching it. And there’s an important principle at the heart of that. The mindset of an active teacher is different — and better — than the mindset of a passive learner. When you’re taking the knowledge in with the expectation of imparting it later, you think of yourself as an actor, and not just a recipient. As an actor, you’re processing information in ways that make for a more sophisticated and durable understanding. 

That understanding applies in a legal context as well. Members of juries serve simultaneously as students and teachers. The magic of a jury is its strength as a group: what one juror misses another will get, and the piece that was fully understood at the time by only one juror, might end up being the decisive evidence for the group. A jury’s understanding isn’t just an aggregation of each of the jurors’ individual understandings. Instead, it is a true collective comprehension: they fill in the picture for each other. Watch mock deliberations and you’ll see a lot of teaching going on. For that reason, there are some clear benefits to preparing jurors for that teaching role. Based on new research covered in a recent Psyblog post, when individuals are told that they will be teaching information to others, they will pay better attention and recall more of what they hear. That research (Nestojko et al, 2014) suggests that attorneys would be wise to explicitly remind jurors of their future role as teachers. This post looks at that recommendation, as well as a few other ideas for helping your jurors in their teacher-roles.

The study’s design is pretty simple. The researchers randomly assigned people to one of two groups. At the start, both groups were told they would be tested on information they were given. But only one group was told that they would have to teach the same information to others first. Members of this group, however, never got to teach anyone. Instead, they just took the test at the end along with the other group. So the only difference between the groups was that one expected to teach and the other didn’t. The mindset those expectant teachers developed, however, led to better understanding prior to the test. As John Nestojko, the lead author, explained, “Learners expecting to teach recalled more material correctly, they organized their recall more effectively and they had better memory for especially important information.”

As far as why a teacher’s mindset would improve comprehension, the researchers theorize that it activates better learning strategies. That could mean that they’re actively seeking out key points, placing those points in a structure, and remembering or generating examples and analogies.

This simple research result carries a few implications for legal persuaders.

Be Explicit About the Teaching Role

“Positively altering a student’s mindset,” the lead author of the study explains, “can be effectively achieved through rather simple instructions.” That suggests that litigators should use opening statement to orient jurors to their upcoming role as a teacher:

Days from now, when all the evidence is in and the testimony is done, all of you will be in the jury room and you’ll get down to business: The judge will tell you that you can finally start deliberating. Now, if you’re like most juries, then at that point no one will have a perfect understanding and recall of everything. But taking all of you together, you’ll get everything. The likelihood is that, for each of you, there will be information — facts, arguments, testimony, parts of the story — that you understand better than anyone else on the jury. And your role will be to explain that to others on the jury. So as you hear this case, you should be asking yourself not only “What do I think about this?” but also “How will I explain that to the others?” Because at the end of the case, you’ll be not only a juror — you’ll be a teacher as well.” 

Use as Many ‘Teacher’s Ed’ Tools as You Can

In addition to following the study’s practice of telling your targets that they’ll be teachers, it is also a good idea to prepare them for that role. That means using tools that are not geared just to individual persuasion, but also aim to facilitate the persuasive process as it continues in deliberation. Here are my ideas on what helps jurors be not just convinced but also convincing in the jury room.

A Structure or Process

One style of thinking that is particularly important for teachers is what the academics call “relational processing,” which means seeing the patterns and how one fact relates to another. For that, structure is key. Enumerate your reasons, break the decision into phases, put your story into clear chapters. Making sure those “chunks” of meaning are as clear to listeners as they are to the speaker increases the chances that leaders on the jury will be able to rely on those same tools to inform and persuade other jurors.

Analogies and Illustrations

As you prepare your case, think not only about the “correct understanding” that you’re after, but also about what causes that understanding to emerge and stick in jurors. What leads a juror to a clear leaning or an “aha!” moment when they suddenly see it your way? Often it comes down to the way it is framed: a turn of a phrase or a theme, a metaphor or an analogy. All can end up being great devices that jurors will not only remember, but use when discussing the case and convincing each other during deliberations.

Visual Aids

Comprehension is not just a matter of hearing, but also seeing. Great demonstrative exhibits can help jurors understand individually, but can also be used as common reference points when they’re trying to explain things to each other. As we demonstrated in our own visual persuasion study, that benefit is best activated in opening statement when the attorney doesn’t just have a few key demonstratives, but instead uses continuous visuals in an immersive approach. You’re not only fully engaging the individual through that approach, but you’re also increasing the chances that they’ll remember and draw upon those images when reminding others in deliberations.

This idea that the best way to learn is to expect to teach is probably my number one motivator in sustaining Persuasive Litigator over the years. It is a little selfish I suppose, but by blogging in a way that emphasizes recommendations, I am learning far more about the social science and the practical tools of legal persuasion than I otherwise would.

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Other Posts on Teaching in Legal Persuasion:

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Nestojko, J. F., Bui, D. C., Kornell, N., & Bjork, E. L. (2014). Expecting to teach enhances learning and organization of knowledge in free recall of text passages. Memory & cognition, 1-11.

Photo Credit: 123rf.com, Used under license