Integrative learning through the interdisciplinary Social Law Clinic — learning experiences of law and social work students

ABSTRACT

This article examines an interdisciplinary clinical study module called the Social Law Clinic targeted for students of law and social work. The aim of this article was to review the pedagogy of the course from the students’ perspectives. The data consists of 29 learning reflections written by social work and law students who participated in the course during semesters between 2017 and 2019. The data was analysed using theory-driven content analysis. The theoretical framework of the study is the model of integrative pedagogy, according to which learning situations combine the essential elements of expertise: theoretical knowledge, practical knowledge, self-regulation skills and socio-cultural knowledge and learning occurs at three levels of human activity: the social, cognitive, and emotional level. According to our results, learning of conceptual knowledge was described by the students especially as being related to a less familiar discipline and inter-professionalism. Learning in practical knowledge and self-regulation skills was reported, both in terms of one’s own professional field and identity as well as inter-professionalism and client work. Socio-cultural knowledge not only in one’s own discipline but also in another one was also described.

KEYWORDS:

• Collaboration
• higher education
• integration of learning
• inter-disciplinary learning
• inter-professional perspectives
• law
• practice learning
• qualitative methods

Introduction

In recent years, inter-professionality and the related concept of interdisciplinarity have featured prominently in the context of research concepts and practices, particularly in the field of social and health care. There are also strong legal obligations for inter-professional collaboration between different service providers, such as local social and health care authorities. At the same time, however, resource and training gaps limit the development and use of well-functioning interprofessional practices (Lalayants, 2013; Mönkkönen et al., 2019; Tousijn, 2012). While interprofessional education and teaching has increased as part of university education, its form and place has not yet been established (Soininen, 2015). In this article, we will examine social work and law students’ learning experiences of an interdisciplinary course, Social Law Clinic, which was launched by a Finnish university in the period 2017–2018. In addition to the Social Law Clinic course, similar learning content has been provided at the national and international level especially in the field of health and care sciences or, more broadly, in health and social sciences as well as in psychology, speech—language pathology and special education (Gaberson & Oermann, 2010; Mönkkönen et al., 2019; Saunders et al., 2019; Spencer, 2003; Tran et al., 2018).

The aim of this article is to provide new knowledge of the learning experiences of social work and law students related to the Social Law Clinic education module that included client work with older people and people with substance abuse issues. The interdisciplinary approach of the course involved developing students’ ability for comprehensive problem-solving and teaching students’ inter-professional teamwork and cooperation skills. In this article, the learning experiences reported by students are examined from the perspective of successes, challenges and development needs related to problem-solving and interdisciplinary issues. The data has been analysed using content analysis (Schreier, 2012).

The Social Law Clinic was designed to meet the needs of working life. In addition to inter-professional cooperation skills, the work of legal experts and social workers requires the ability to use a client-oriented approach and interact effectively.

Description of teaching in the social work clinic

The scope of the Social Law Clinic module is five ECTS (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System) credit units. The aim is to familiarize students with the legal basis concerning older people and substance abuse as well as the special features of legal and social counselling with these client groups, and the interaction skills needed in working with clients. As far as the law is concerned, the course is part of administrative and social law studies and law students are recommended to participate in it only after having acquired sufficient administrative, social and family law skills. The course can be completed as part of optional special sub-studies of advanced social work education. The Social Law Clinic is aimed at students in a master’s degree programme, enabling them to deepen and apply what they have previously learned during their studies.

The Social Law Clinic starts with joint seminar work, which includes preparatory lectures and exercises. The lectures are provided in video form. After the joint seminars, students provide interprofessional legal and social guidance and advice to service users in challenging life situations, who are either older people or adults of working age. Service users involved in clinical work are recruited through partner organisations. One of the partners has been an organisation that provides housing and daytime activity services mainly for people of working age who have various social problems, such as substance abuse problems and homelessness.

Before starting the actual client work, students and teachers are introduced to the partner organizations through which the clients are recruited. This introduction is carried out through visits to these places and/or familiarisation with the organizations’ aims, values and practices via their websites. At this stage, students are divided into working partners or small groups of three persons with representatives of both disciplines in each group, depending on the number of students in the different disciplines. Partners or small groups receive their contact information from teachers or directly from the clients themselves and agree on an initial meeting with the client. This so-called mapping interview examines the need for client support and guidance. The students then agree with the client on the date of an actual counselling session. Before this counselling session with the client, the students have a guidance meeting together with the teachers. Client work is carried out under the supervision of teachers, and the students are supported by group guidance provided by teachers.

At the end of the Social Law Clinic, the student partners or small groups write a report on their client cases together and reflect on what they have learned. In the closing seminar, students present their own client case and consider it from the perspectives of cooperation and ethical encounters. At the end of the course, the students also return individual papers in which they reflect and assess the course from the point of view of their own learning.

Interdisciplinary clinic education combining the expertise of law and social work

Overall, interdisciplinary studies have gained a bigger role in the Finnish social work education during the past years, and there has been on-going educational collaboration with health sciences, in particular (Mönkkönen et al., 2019). However, interprofessional collaboration between social work and law studies has only just been evolving, and in the Finnish context, the Social Law Clinic is the first teaching clinic bringing social work and law students together.

At the international level, there are some similar examples of combining social work and law studies in clinic education. Law and social work are intrinsically linked to many disciplines, and clinic education has been used to bring together expertise from different disciplines in a problem-oriented way at the international level. The theme of the clinic education can be targeted at a specific client group such as children, older people or impoverished people (Galowiz, 2012). Areas of expertise in law and social work have also been combined in previous implementations, for example in the field of child welfare (Faller & Vandervort, 2007; Zavez, 2005) and domestic violence (Colarossi & Forgey, 2006; St Joan & Salomonsen-Sautel, 2001). In the United States, legal clinics aimed at older people have been established at the universities of Pennsylvania, Wake Forest, Virginia and Loyola, which have involved social and health professionals, lawyers and law students providing free advice to older people on legal issues related to old age (see Duffy et al., 2012, p. 31; 40–42).

Interdisciplinary clinic education has many advantages for students (Hyams & Sadique, 2014). Interdisciplinary clinic education helps students broaden their perspective beyond their own discipline. The student learns about the tasks, approaches and culture of other professions, as well as their roles in cooperation with these, and the common and different characteristics of the fields (Beltran & Miller, 2019; Floyd & Morrison, 2014). The learning affects the perceptions of communication, listening, appreciation and interaction in interprofessional working life. Challenges emerge in interdisciplinary clinic education related to sector-specific concepts, customs and ethical principles as well as the impact of anxiety, performance pressures and competition caused by professional uncertainty related to students’ cooperation. (Galowiz, 2012).

We also noticed differences between the involved disciplines when planning our Social Law Clinic. One of the differences between the approaches in legal sciences and social work is concerned with the attitude towards the service user: in the context of law, the legal expert’s point of view represents the client’s wishes, while social work takes into account the service user’s interests as a whole and their effects on the wider surrounding community (IFSW, 2008; Lakimiesliitto, 1995). Combining the perspective of social work with legal education brings with it a social justice perspective, which is often overlooked in the content of education in law. (Hyams & Gertner, 2012). In this respect, it should be noted that the legal experts working in social and health care can have different approaches as their representatives may vary from private service users to municipalities as well as third sector associations, for example.

Integrative teaching and learning

Integrative pedagogy is a theoretical model developed by Päivi Tynjälä (2007, 2018) together with her colleagues (Tynjälä et al., 2016) that refers to the combination of key elements of expertise in learning situations: theoretical knowledge, practical skills, self-regulatory skills, and socio-cultural knowledge (Tynjälä et al., 2016; Tynjälä, 2018). In the model of integrative pedagogy, the integration of the aforementioned four elements of expertise and the relationships between these are essential. Theoretical or conceptual knowledge is applied in the field of practical, i.e. experiential knowledge. Similarly, experiential knowledge is explored, i.e. conceptualised by means of empirical research into theoretical information (Tynjälä et al., 2016). Self-regulatory skills refer to metacognitive and reflective skills, and continuous reflection of one’s own activities and learning is essential for their development. By reflecting their own learning and activities, learners combine theoretical and experiential knowledge using their self-regulatory skills, thus forming a comprehensive understanding of the learning content (Tynjälä et al., 2016). The combination of elements of expertise can rely on tools to promote integration between different types of knowledge. These include, for example, steering or small group discussions or writing assignments used for reflecting one’s own activities or learning. (Tynjälä, 2018).

Combining theoretical, experiential and self-regulatory knowledge and skills can be considered a problem-solving process in which students solve practical problems using conceptual knowledge while developing their self-regulatory and socio-cultural skills. In such a problem-solving process involving combining different types of knowledge, some of which may even be contradictory, learners use so-called ‘integrative thinking’ (Kallio, 2011; Tynjälä et al., 2016). The ability to carry out integrative thinking is therefore essential from the point of view of integrative learning, and the problem-solving process, to which all the above types of knowledge and expertise relate, enables integrative thinking and learning. The learning environment and methods must enable practising problem-solving processes. These include, for example, professional environments where it is necessary to apply acquired theoretical knowledge into practice. (Tynjälä et al., 2016). During the implementation of the Social Law Clinic, the problem-solving process is connected to client work, which involves students providing guidance and counselling to clients with social and legal problems related to their life situations.

Socio-cultural knowledge is social, often tacit knowledge, which is particularly attached to practical information. Therefore, learning must take place in the socio-cultural contexts in which this knowledge is generated and applied. Adopting this knowledge in other ways is much more difficult (Tynjälä et al., 2016). In the model of integrative pedagogy, it is ideal that practical and socio-cultural knowledge is embraced in an authentic working environment or, if this is not possible, in exercises made as authentic as possible, such as simulations (Tynjälä et al., 2014). This also makes it possible to combine and apply theoretical knowledge with practical skills as well as learning self-regulatory skills.

The integrative pedagogy model is based on an understanding where learning takes place at three levels of human activity: the social, cognitive and emotional level (Tynjälä, 2018). In integrative learning, all these levels are present and their importance for learning is recognized. At the same time, there is a commitment to the understanding that the levels are not isolated from one another but instead occur simultaneously in human life. For a long time, the focus of research in learning was mainly on learning at the cognitive level, which mainly refers to learning related to the processes of computing, i.e. perception, memory and thinking. Learning was examined from the perspectives of increasing knowledge. Later, the social level, i.e. the importance of social interaction in learning, has been recognized as essential to learning. Learning can also be perceived from a socio-cognitive point of view that combines the two. It is only in the last fifteen to twenty years, in addition to the above, that attention has also been paid to the emotional level and the importance of emotions in learning. (Tynjälä, 2018).

The importance of emotions in learning has been particularly highlighted by the German development psychologist Reinhard Pekrun, who has, together with other researchers (Pekrun & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2012), presented a four-step model of emotions related to learning. The first of the emotions include achievement emotions associated with different experimental situations where learning is assessed. Especially in situations in which students are forced to compete with one another, these include hope, pride, anxiety and shame. Topic emotions are related to the subject matter to be learned; in the course presented in this article, these emotions are accentuated, and can include emotions such as empathy or hatred. Social emotions arise in interaction with the teacher and other students. And include admiration, envy, pride or even anxiety. Epistemic emotions are related to knowledge, learning and problem-solving and include interest, enthusiasm, frustration or confusion. (Pekrun & Linnenbrink-Garcia, 2012). Similarly as in learning, the importance of emotions has also been understood in working life as part of the expertise of professionals in different fields.

All types of knowledge and levels of learning included in the integrative pedagogy are present in the Social Law Clinic and also described in the students’ reflections that form the data of this study. Hence, the model offers an interesting basis for reflecting on and examining the learning occurring in this particular clinic education. Next, we describe the data and how we have examined the students’ learning experiences in relation to the key elements of the integrative pedagogy model.

Data and methods

In this study, the data consists of reflections on learning that were written by social work and law students at the end of the Social Law Clinic study module. In this context, we refer to the literary output produced by students majoring in the fields of social work and law who completed the course, in which the students evaluated and reflected on their learning process and the development of their skills during the Social Law Clinic activities. According to a previous study, students’ experiences of using reflection on their own learning as a learning method naturally vary between individuals; however, despite any challenges faced, a large number of students have found this kind of learning to develop their critical thinking skills and increase their professional self-understanding (Spencer, 2014a, 2014b).

The research material consists of 16 individual reflections and 13 reflections by pairs or small groups that the students have produced as part of compulsory course work during the academic years 2017–2018 and 2018–2019 (in total 47 pages, New Times Roman 12, line spacing 1.5). A slightly larger part of the research data comprised individual reflections than pair reflections, while the students’ major subjects were fairly evenly distributed in the data. In their individual reflections. The students’ assessment was slightly more focused on the implementation methods and learning as a personal experience compared to the pair reflections, in which the assessment was mainly focused on the reflection of pair work. The students were asked for their written consent for using the reflections as research material, and only the texts by the students who gave their consent has included as research material.

Our research questions were as follows:

What kind of learning experiences did the social work and law students have in the Social Law Clinic?

How did the different levels of the integrative pedagogy model appear in the students’ learning experiences?

To answer these questions, we analysed the data using the method of content analysis (Schreier, 2012) starting from a data-driven analysis and continuing with a theory-directed analysis using the model of integrative pedagogy. In the first phase, the student’s reflections were read several times to gain an overall understanding of their learnings experiences. After this, the learning experiences were grouped and conceptualised into subcategories, and, finally, upper categories, which were identified and described using the concepts of the integrative pedagogy model. As a result, the analysis produced a theoretical modelling of the ‘integrative clinic education’ model.

Results: interdisciplinary clinical education as integrative learning

Social, cognitive and emotional levels are combined in learning experiences

In the model of integrative pedagogy, three different levels of learning are present at the same time. These are social, cognitive and emotional levels (Tynjälä, 2018). There were several descriptions in the learning reflections of how meaningful the students perceived the fact that the course combined theory and practice instead of only focusing on one or the other, as had usually been the case with the students’ previous studies. The students found it particularly fruitful that theoretical knowledge had been combined with concrete client work. It was also considered important that the course involved working as interprofessional pairs combining expertise in social work and law, which had made the social level of learning tangible. Especially law students, pointed out that the course had been the first or even the only course in their studies that had involved combining practical and theoretical knowledge. Such a learning experience is described in the following quotes, the first from a reflection by a law student and the second by a social work student:

My experience in the Social Law Clinic course is very positive in all respects. This was the first course in which interdisciplinary work has been carried out, which is why I was looking forward to the course with keen interest. Law courses are very much focused on mass districts and book exams, which I do not in any way consider to be the best way of learning for me. That is why I am always looking forward to courses that focus on alternative methods of performance, such as course assignments, drafting of various reports or group work. During this course, we also got to practice encountering clients, which was really interesting.

As a learning experience, this has been one of the greatest in my studies. My know-how and understanding of client work, inter-professional work, the legal aspects of social work and client groups were advanced in this course more than in many other courses combined. My learning was supported by the fact that we worked together with the right people and explored the right problems.

The students praised working with clients, as well as working in pairs or small groups, and their reflections described strong learning experiences in connection with this course content. In these descriptions, the students’ level of emotions was also strongly present. For example, there were reports of particularly successful client meetings, which had stayed in the students’ minds during the course as strongly emotional experiences. On the other hand, the students also described client encounters where everything had not gone perfectly, but which had made them realize something essential about encountering clients, partly because the encounters had not been optimal. The students also made reference to some particularly touching client cases in light of the emotions these had stirred up. For some students, the clients’ life situation had seemed so difficult that it led to reflections on the need for learning much more about these matters (in this context, these thoughts were particularly related to homelessness and serious substance abuse problems). The following excerpt from the reflection by a pair of students describes emotional experiences related to a successful client meeting:

We thought we were able to find very good solutions to the client for the questions he had asked us. The client seemed to understand our guidance on how to move forward with the EU disability permit application and get started with a self-support service. That was our aim, and in that we thought we succeeded well. Working with the client was rewarding for both and it was inspiring to see the interaction with the client again in a completely different way. Both of us gained more experience in client encounters and working with the client, but also gained experience in working with a partner, as well as in another discipline and its benefits. With this experience, we are able to further develop ourselves and our own expertise in client work.

Overall, positive feedback was given to the methods used to implement the course, although development suggestions were also presented, particularly based on the first year’s implementation. Positive feedback was given by students for whom the course had provided a new kind of learning experience, and on combining different types of learning (client work combined with lectures and inter-professional work in pairs), the client work model as a whole, and the selected co-operation partners and familiarization with them in advance before working with clients. The development suggestions were mainly related to working on the content of the lectures, the low number of lectures or seminar hours, the low number of client meetings, and unclear instructions for written work. The feedback from the students has been used to develop the course.

Conceptual, experiential, self-regulatory and socio-cultural knowledge increased

The students described many aspects of learning that had taken place during the Social Law Clinic course. In their reflections, the student described an increase in their knowledge and competence related to the other field of science that they had been more unfamiliar with. Students from both disciplines reflected on this: the law students wrote that they had learned a lot about the skills and field of work in social work, while the social work students similarly described that they had gained new knowledge about law and its application. The reflections also highlighted that using the joint learning process with representatives of two different disciplines had been successful, and that combining the content of the two disciplines in the instruction had also increased their understanding of the relationship between the two disciplines. This kind of learning experience is illustrated by the following quote from a social work student:

‘The interprofessional cooperation in the course was very interesting. I felt that I learned the best things about enforcement, advocacy and debt issues through the client’s situation and practice while my partner explained my client’s financial affairs to me in a very comprehensive way. I think it seems crazy that social work does not work closely with legal professions, as the clients’ situations are certainly often complex and affect both sectors’.

In the above quote, the student can be considered to refer to an increase in his/her conceptual, experiential and, to some extent, socio-cultural knowledge. Conceptual knowledge includes learning theoretical concepts from both another and one’s own discipline. For example, the above-mentioned insight into how much both social work and legal sciences need to build a shared understanding in working with clients refers to experiential knowledge. This is also connected to a socio-cultural understanding of the life situations of client groups. On the other hand, working with a student in another field has also enabled students to take a look at the world of socio-cultural knowledge connected to the other discipline.

In addition to the areas of knowledge mentioned above, the reflections also described how the students had acquired some self-regulatory knowledge. For example, some of the reflections reported insights gained about the students’ own, already developed professional strengths. Some also described experiences of strengthening or clarifying their own professional identity on the basis of the client work carried out during the course and subsequent reflection. The students strengthened their perception of themselves as an expert working with a particular client or gained entirely new insight related to their professional orientation, as described by a social work student in the following excerpt:

I feel that the course has strengthened my professional identity. Thanks to this course, I have thought that one possible career for me could be in the field of gerontological social work. I had never really thought about this option before, but now that I was able to concretely try what kinds of things work with older people, my interest was awakened.

Working in pairs with clients developed integrative thinking about inter-professionalism

To some extent, self-regulatory knowledge and the acquisition of metacognitive skills were also associated with the learning experiences described in the reflections in relation to inter-professionality. The reflections conveyed strong insights into inter-professionality, including both knowledge (what it is, what are its benefits) and skills (what kind of competence is required in good inter-professional cooperation). The students also described ideas emerging from the client work carried out in pairs or groups of three on a more general level. The students felt that inter-professional client work, such as that carried out on the course (which could also be described in terms of integrative pedagogy as a problem-solving process), had developed their integrative thinking skills and, as a result, insights into the benefits of interprofessional co-operation in particular, as discussed by one of the law students in his reflection:

In its entirety, at least I learned from interprofessional cooperation extensively and also from putting my own theoretical knowledge into practice. Although I have a long history of work and can adapt to different tasks, this was actually the first time for putting theory into practice and reminded me once again that working life and practice vs. theoretical studies are two different worlds, even though they should go hand in hand.(…) When you look at the number of laws and regulations related to our meetings with clients that need to be applied and at the same time taking the needs of social work into account, interprofessional cooperation will be more pronounced. There is no small and narrow sector where one specialization can be used to manage such large entities, but cooperation and inter-professionalism are even more pronounced. No one is expected to control all of these, but dialogue and cooperation between different professionals is the power by which working with older people gives the best and most satisfactory outcome from the client’s point of view.

Learning about inter-professionalism was described abundantly in the reflections, not only from the point of view of its content and importance, but also more concretely from the perspective of the skills that the students considered were required by inter-professional cooperation. The students described the importance of different teamwork skills and acquired knowledge about, among other things, the division of labour, the presentation of each professional competence and the importance of setting a common goal in inter-professional work.

The students described how client work was realized in practice, which is essential in inter-professional work. The following reflection by a pair of students describes related insight:

We formed a good picture of interprofessional work, in which we share and utilise our expertise and at the same time got to know the world and perspective of various professions. In our opinion, it was important to respect the knowledge and skills of the other person, to discuss and agree on the course of the meeting and key issues, both before and after the sessions, so that each of us had the same idea of how the meeting went and how to proceed in the future. One of us could also remember a number of important things about the meeting that the other had not picked up, and this supported forming an understanding of the client’s overall situation.

Overall, the interdisciplinary work seemed to significantly strengthen the students’ perception that professionals from different disciplines can achieve a more comprehensive picture of the client’s situation together and thus be able to help clients much more efficiently when working together in interprofessional terms with the client. At the same time, students also highlighted the skills needed for inter-professional work. The importance of teamwork skills had been identified in concrete client situations, both through successes and failures. The importance and strengths of the inter-professional approach were highlighted almost without exception in all the students’ reflections. Only one reflection, written during the first year of implementation, expressed a suspicion that students from different fields were not actually in the situation as representatives of their own profession, but rather as university students from the same social background, who met their clients mainly as individuals and who did not really have any prior knowledge of meeting such a group of clients.

The students expressed a hope that they would be informed in good time about the problems faced by clients in their life situations and that they would receive instruction from both disciplines on what kinds of things they may encounter related to the client’s life situation. For the students who did not have sufficient experience of client work before entering the Social Law Clinic, it would be important to provide them with sufficient socio-cultural information about the client groups they work with. Support should also be given to dealing with emotions after the client meetings. Students need information about how to cope with challenging experiences that may arise from difficult situations with clients. On the other hand, emotions are an important part of the learning experience and not something to be feared: it would be worth highlighting this in the Finnish university education, whether in law, social work or any other field. In the Social Work Clinic, and other similar education models, it may be challenging to strike a balance between the pursuit of independent learning experiences and students’ need for guidance and support.

In summary, we have compiled the following figure (Figure 1) in which we present the results by reflecting them based on the main concepts of the integrative pedagogy model.

Figure 1. Students’ learning experiences in Social Law Clinic in the framework of integrative learning.

According to our results, all levels of learning recognised by integrative pedagogy are strongly reflected in the students’ learning experiences and the reasoning behind these is based on the key elements of expertise. The social level is connected to the acquisition of experiential and socio-cultural knowledge, which takes place in accordance with the objectives of interprofessional teaching not only in relation to one’s own discipline but also in the other discipline. The students also learn skills related to interprofessional practices and acquire both practical skills and socio-cultural knowledge related to different client groups and their life situations. At the cognitive level, the learning of conceptual knowledge particularly occurs, and this is described in relation to both the students’ own and the other discipline. Conceptual knowledge related to interdisciplinary work and its customs also increased. The level of emotions was particularly attached to the learning of self-regulatory and experiential knowledge, which the students described to have occurred both in relation to their own field of activity and their own professional identity, also in relation to inter-professionalism and client work. In terms of inter-professionalism, for example, key insights were concerned with the importance of interdisciplinary work and the possibilities of working with the client groups which the clinic training concerned.

Discussion

The aim of our study was to examine what kind of learning experiences students had in the Social Law Clinic course and how different knowledge bases and levels of learning introduced in the model of integrative pedagogy (Tynjälä, 2018) are manifested in students’ learning experiences. Our research shows that it is worth learning in an interdisciplinary setting because this supports acquiring and strengthens both socio-cultural skills and knowledge, as well as conceptual, self-regulatory and practical knowledge and skills. In the Social Law Clinic course, this knowledge has been combined from the perspective of two disciplines, different client groups and collaboration.

There are also some limitations in our research design and the results of this study. The Social Law Clinic course had only been carried out for two academic years at the time of writing this article, which is why the research material is not particularly extensive. In addition, the course has been changed between the two implementations; for example, the content of introductory lectures has been changed and the course has been developed based on feedback received after the first implementation. However, despite these changes, the core of the course, interprofessional client work, has remained the same. Nearly all students who have completed the course so far have agreed that their learning reflections can be used as data in research on the course.

Efforts have been made at all stages for conducting research in an ethically sustainable manner. The students have been asked for their written consent to use their reflections for research purposes, and the anonymity of the data has been ensured throughout the research process to ensure that students cannot be identified. Special attention has been paid to ethical aspects in the approach used in examining the Social Law Clinic course, as the clients were people in different vulnerable situations. The students’ reflections did not contain personal data or any other information that could identify the client. We have further aimed to minimise this risk by using the model of integrative pedagogy as a reference framework for theory-driven content analysis.

Regarding the feedback on the learning reflections, it is worth noting that the university’s law studies contain only a few practice-oriented courses. For many of the students, the Social Law Clinic course offered their first learning experiences with ‘real’ clients. This means that the students may not have been able to make any comparisons with previous experiences when assessing their learning and the course. In other words, the course could have received feedback of different depths if it had not been so exceptional to the students.

Even though the pedagogical benefits of clinic education seem to be quite clear based on this study, some limitations have also been found in clinic education in international literature. Clinic education requires both students’ and teachers’ time, and as it is a form of irregular and long-term education, using a clinic in accordance with the education institute’s schedule that follows the academic year can be difficult (Galowiz, 2012). Clinic education strengthens students’ working life skills but does not necessarily help them succeed in other studies such as book exams (Koroma & Antoniou, 2017). These challenges also applied to the Social Law Clinic course. Therefore, it was unexpected that the challenges outlined above were not repeatedly highlighted in the learning reflections. This may be due to one of the weaknesses of our material: another method was simultaneously used for collecting feedback from the students. The students may have found it appropriate to save some of the feedback they had on the practical aspects related to the form of teaching to the university’s course feedback or oral discussions with teachers. However, the students’ feedback on the practices used in implementing the course is not essential from the perspective of our research questions. The learning reflections that were used as the data of the study were also the student’s learning tasks, which were evaluated and included also in the grading of the course. Hence, it is possible that the students’ feedback was more positive due to their desire to please the teachers.

Tynjälä’s integrative learning model was not presented to students during the course. It may be wondered whether integrative learning would have been more effective if students had been aware of the pedagogical background of the course. Defining the purpose of the course could have changed the content of the learning reflections based on the definition: after all, students are motivated to demonstrate their performance in accordance with the objectives of the course. This could have led to not describing the learning process in a natural way, but, instead, focusing on the learning objectives set out by the teacher. On the other hand, the conceptualization of experiential knowledge. For instance, would have been possible. By modifying the assignment of the learning reflections, students could be able to process and classify their own experiences more actively.

Unlike with regular classroom teaching, clinical teaching enables better chance-based learning (Hyams & Sadique, 2014). Random learning is not planned but arises from interactions with unfamiliar people and topics. Because of this, monitoring and guiding clinical learning is challenging. The student does not necessarily even perceive learning at the time of it occurs but only in the later stages of teaching, for example in the context of a written reflection. Therefore, supporting random learning requires identifying, perceiving and enabling related processes throughout the course. (Hyams & Sadique, 2014).

The model of interdisciplinary clinic education we have developed provides one way of combining different levels of learning and knowledge areas. The course will continue to be implemented and developed based on the feedback obtained from students and clients. Based on the current knowledge, the Social Law Clinic offers an important platform for combining different elements of knowledge in the context of interprofessional learning.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).