I have spent the past hour indulging myself in some basic materials from the field of public health education, a field I spotlighted back in October. In particular, I’ve been reading through a basic health education textbook, which starts out—appropriately—with a definition of the field.
In Canada, there is no settled definition of “public legal education.” In fact, there have been ideological battles fought over its meaning and not even a tattered consensus has emerged. Lois Gander arrived at a functional definition by deconstructing the term in her article The Changing Face of Public Legal Education in Canada, News & Views on Civil Justice Reform, Summer 2003, at 4 (PDF). Still, there is no accepted definition that all of the many PLE providers in Canada can rally under.
The much more well-developed (and well-funded) fields of health education and promotion can help, perhaps. Intensive efforts, like the American Association of Health Education‘s Joint Committee on Health Education and Health Promotion Terminology and a World Health Organization health education glossary project, have produced standard definitions that are widely used in those fields. For instance:
health education—“any combination of planned learning experiences based on sound theories that provide individuals, groups, and communities the opportunity to acquire information and the skills needed to make quality health decisions” (Joint Committee on Health Education and Health Education Terminology).
health education—“comprises consciously constructed opportunities for learning involving some form of communication designed to improve health literacy, including improving knowledge and developing life skills which are conducive to individual and community health” (World Health Organization Health Promotion Glossary (PDF)).
health literacy—“represents the cognitive and social skills which determine the motivation and ability of individuals to gain access to, understand and use information in ways which promote and maintain good health” (World Health Organization Health Promotion Glossary (PDF)).
I wonder if these be adjusted slightly (to reflect the legal subject area) and work as basic definitions in the PLE field. How accurate is this try?
Public legal education comprises consciously constructed opportunities for learning involving some form of communication to improve legal literacy, including improving knowledge and developing life skills that enable individuals, groups, and communities to make quality legal decisions.