The Postgraduate Capstone Experience: Negotiating the Pedagogical Tensions

Abstract

In designing a capstone experience, legal educators may encounter a number of tensions between competing pedagogical imperatives and conflicting capstone principles. Should we focus on teaching content or should we focus on developing skills? Should we emphasise integration and consolidation of knowledge, or transition and the development of professional identity? Should we encourage specialisation of knowledge and skills or should we be offering a broader view that takes account of context and diversity? This article considers how these tensions may be revealed, negotiated and managed, using a case study of a postgraduate capstone unit in international law. In doing so, the article adds to the literature on capstone units in law, which has to date focused on the undergraduate experience, and demonstrates that the existing work on capstones can be successfully applied in the postgraduate context. The article further argues that postgraduate units may offer particularly useful vehicles for exposing the pedagogical tensions involved in designing a capstone experience and experimenting with techniques for managing those tensions.