Does community legal education work? Educating English language students about consumer contracts

Community Legal Education (CLE) is undertaken by legal aid commissions and community legal centres. It aims to build legal capability so people can identify and address or avoid legal problems. The need to demonstrate the effectiveness of CLE arises in the context of limited funding for legal aid services, limited previous research and increasing demand for these services.

This study addressed this gap by examining the effectiveness of a CLE intervention that focuses on consumer contracts, as part of a national program called What’s the law? Australian law for new arrivals. Two research questions were framed to address the question of whether CLE works:

1. Is there a measurable difference between students’ understandings of the legal issues associated with buying a car, borrowing money and seeking help, after they participate in a class on this topic?

2. Did students find the class about buying a car helpful and if so, how?

This mixed methods study used a pre/post research design, which involved developing and testing a survey used in an interview setting. English as a second language students were interviewed before and after they participated in a class about buying a car.

Most participants were students in the Adult Migrant English Program in four different regions in Australia. All students were studying to achieve a Certificate in Spoken and Written English.

Forty-seven completed pre and post interviews were analyised. Responses to 13 close ended questions were scored based the responses expected from well-informed and assertive consumers. A repeated measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to analyse changes in interview scores. The participants’ mean pre score was 9.38, which increased to mean post score of 11.68. This shows an improvement of 2.3 between the pre and post scores. The ANOVA found that this was a statistical significant improvement.. The Cohen’s effect size for the mean change, corrected for paired data, was estimated to be d = 1.21, 95% CI (0.83, 1.58). This suggests a ‘strong effect’. The results show a measurable difference in participants’ understandings of the legal issues associated with buying a car.

There was a large difference between the state categories with the SA cohort being more likely to have purchased a car, to be older and to have lived in Australia for longer. Despite this, participants’ baseline results were similar to those of newer arrivals and the difference between the pre and post scores remained statistically significant, F(1,43) = 60.64, p < .001.

While the overall change score provided evidence of a positive shift in participants’ attitudes, the item analysis shows where shifts occurred by looking at changes in relation to specific questions.

The qualitative thematic and frequency analysis showed that participants’ commented on the importance of understanding contracts before signing them, issues associated with borrowing money, the need to be wary of people who sell cars, the consequences of not taking care when buying expensive items and knowing that help is available. In many cases participants’ comments indicated intended actions.

While this research project did not test the application of participants’ knowledge or intentions, these results demonstrate that the CLE in question ‘worked’ for these participants. This research confirms that the buying a car story in What’s the law? Australian law for new arrivals had a positive impact on the attitudes of the participants involved. Further research is warranted to build the sample size, identify other influences on participants attitudes and assess the stability of the change over time and in ‘real-life’ situations.