The Cobbler Wears No Shoes: A Lesson for Research Instruction

This article discusses the importance of a teacher's enthusiasm for the material to helping students learn. The idea for this article arose out of informal conversations with legal writing colleagues some of whom seemed resigned to the fact that legal research is a boring subject and there isn't much we can do to change that. This article argues that passion for the material is essential to good teaching because it increases student motivation (especially intrinsic motivation) as well as their self-efficacy. The article discusses motivational theory in the context of how a teacher's classroom attitudes influence, for better or worse, students' desire to learn.