Threshold Concepts:

A discipline-based approach to learning and design

Photo: Andrei Ceru

Introduction

• Aims• Background/context to threshold concepts

research• Characteristics of threshold concepts• Threshold concepts in the field– What concepts arise in different disciplines

• Threshold concepts and learning activities• Curriculum design

Photo: Andrei Ceru

Session aims

Overall aim:. The aim of this workshop is to help participants -

• learn about ‘threshold concepts’ and ‘troublesome knowledge’

• consider what threshold concepts might exist in their discipline

• design a learning activity around a threshold concept in their field

• Redesign an undergraduate curriculum with threshold concepts in mind

Activity: recalling a difficult learning experience

Photo: Don Nelson

Think back to your time as a learner in your subject.

Try to remember a key concept or theory that you struggled with.

Please make some notes about the concept/theory and the experience of learning it.

Threshold knowledge as a portal

‘A threshold concept can be considered as akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something.

It represents a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which the learner cannot progress.’ (Meyer and Land, 2003)

Photo: Andrei Ceru

Some characteristics of threshold concepts

• Transformative – once understood, they should shift one’s perception of the subject

• Irreversible – cannot be ‘unlearned’• Integrative – has the capacity to ‘expose a hidden

interrelatedness’

• Troublesome - potentially counter-intuitive. 'In grasping a threshold concept a student moves from a common sense understanding to an understanding which may conflict with perceptions that have previously seemed self-evidently true.’ (Davies, 2003)

Photo: Kathleen Cohen

Troublesome knowledge

• knowledge that is difficult to teach and difficult to learn but which offers the learner a new perspective on the topic and, potentially, the discipline.

• Troublesome knowledge might also require new use of language and shifts in understanding. It may also take a learner deeper into the subject.

• Aim is not to elide or avoid, but rather to acknowledge troublesome knowledge.

• Land, 2008 and Perkins, 2006

Photo: Andrei Ceru

Liminal spaces

• Suspended and transformative space that a learner occupies by moving from one state or position to another

• Can be a space in which someone engages with previously held beliefs/certainties and renders them problematic

• Often unsettling

• Land and Meyer 2008; Land 2010Photo: Andrei Ceru

Activity: initial responses

Please watch the interview with Glynis Cousin.Glynis Cousin Interview

– What is your initial response to Glynis’ account of threshold concepts?

– Does anything in your background as a learner or a teacher resonate with her account of threshold concepts?

Photo: Andrei Ceru

Threshold concepts in the disciplines Subject Threshold Concept

English literature Deconstruction; hegemony; signification

Economics Opportunity cost, the margin

Maths Limit, complex number

Electrical engineering Frequency response

Computer science Object-oriented programming (OOP); memory/pointers, state

Academic literacies Writing as a social practice

Cultural studies; sociology Otherness

Accounting Depreciation

Engineering Spin

Politics ‘the state’

Land 2010; Land et al 2008; Meyer and Land, 2003

Activity: identifying threshold concepts in your discipline

• Consider the threshold concepts on the handout from your discipline (or cognate discipline) – Do you agree with the categorisation?

• Please identify up to 3 additional threshold concepts in your field.

• Please discuss your findings with colleagues from similar disciplines.

Photo: Andrei Ceru

Learning and threshold concepts

• How can we use threshold concepts to design learning activities?

• Please see handout with case study and examples.

Activity: designing a learning activity around a threshold concept

• Please take a threshold concept from your discipline (from the handout or one that you’ve identified)

• Spend some time drafting a learning activity (or a series of activities) around the concept

• Share the idea with up to four other people.

Phot

o: K

athl

een

Cohe

n

Threshold concept and curriculum design

‘The role of the teacher is to arrange victories for the students.’

Quintilian 35-100 AD

• Cited in Land 2010

Photo: Kathleen Cohen

Using threshold concepts to guide curriculum design

• ‘Jewels in the curriculum’ – see the threshold concepts as points of transformation; build the curriculum around them

• Allow space for confusion• ‘Recursiveness and excursiveness’– Learners might have to revisit and doubleback

while engaging with a threshold concept• (Cousin, 2006, drawing on Land et al 2006)

Photo: Andrei Ceru

Curriculum design task

• How could you use an awareness of threshold concepts for curriculum design?

• Please take a curriculum (either from a single module, a year or an entire degree).

• Consider where the core threshold concepts appear in the curriculum/curricula.

• Are there ways in which you could reorganise the curriculum having identified threshold concepts?

Photo: Andrei Ceru

References• Cousin, G. (2006) ‘An Introduction to threshold concepts’ http://gees.ac.uk/planet/p17/gc.pdf• Land, R. (2010) ‘Threshold Concepts and Issues of Interdisciplinarity’ .Third Biennial Threshold

Concepts Symposium: Exploring transformative dimensions of threshold concepts: The University of New South Wales Australia, 2010.

• Land, R.; Meyer, J. and Smith, J. (2008) Threshold Concepts within the Disciplines. Rotterdam: Sense.

• Meyer, J. and Land, R. (2003)’Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: Linkages to Ways of Thinking and Practising within the Disciplines’. ETL Project Report No. 4. http://www.etl.tla.ed.ac.uk/docs/ETLreport4.pdf

• Perkins, D. (2006) ‘Constructivism and troublesome knowledge. In JHF Meyer and R Land (Eds) Overcoming barriers to student understanding: Threshold Concepts and troublesome knowledge. London: Routledge.

Contacts: Jane Hughes and Colleen McKennaJ.hughes@hedera.org.uk c.mckenna@hedera.org.uk