Investigating law students' empathy to issues of environment and development: lessons from a group project in Sri Lanka

The Environmental Law course of the Open University of Sri Lanka's LLB programme offered students a group project activity to foster humanistic attributes, especially empathy, towards environment and development issues. Drawing on a survey and focus group interviews, this paper explores the extent to which this project developed students' sensitivities to environmental issues, and fostered empathy towards the natural environment and communities affected by environmental and developmental problems in Sri Lanka. Almost all students undertook the optional fieldtrip to research their topic. The findings indicate that the project enhanced students' sensitivity to and interest in the environmental issues they explored. It enabled them to contextualise the black letter law and the theoretical knowledge of the classroom within its sociological context and increase their awareness of environmental and developmental problems. Findings also show that the field experience largely contributed to students' increased awareness of stakeholders, ground realities and the myriad of context-related challenges, fostering attitudinal change and empathy towards the natural environment and affected peoples. In addition, areas for improved curriculum design for projects such as these were also noted.