Threshold Concepts: A Discipline-based approach to learning and design.
A presentation by Colleen McKenna and Jane Hughes from HEDERA for the Disciplinary Thinking OER Workshop at the University of Bath 02/02/12.
More details from http://www.disiplinarythinking.wordpress.com
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Threshold Concepts: A Discipline-based approach to learning and design
1. Photo: Andrei Ceru
Threshold Concepts:
A discipline-based approach to
learning and design
2. Introduction
• Aims Photo: Andrei Ceru
• 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
3. 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
4. Activity: recalling a difficult learning
experience
Think back to your time as a
learner in your subject.
Try to remember a key
concept or theory that you
Photo: Don Nelson struggled with.
Please make some notes
about the concept/theory
and the experience of
learning it.
5. Threshold knowledge as
a portal
Photo: Andrei Ceru
‘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)
6. 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
7. Troublesome knowledge
Photo: Andrei Ceru
• 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
8. 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 2010
Photo: Andrei Ceru
9. Activity: initial responses
Photo: Andrei Ceru
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?
10. 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
11. 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
12. Learning and threshold concepts
• How can we use threshold concepts to design
learning activities?
• Please see handout with case study and
examples.
13. 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.
Photo: Kathleen Cohen
14. 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
15. 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
16. Curriculum design task
Photo: Andrei Ceru
• 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?
17. 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 McKenna
J.hughes@hedera.org.ukc.mckenna@hedera.org.uk
Notas do Editor
Note to workshop leader:The idea behind this workshop is that is could introduce the idea of threshold concepts to participants and take them all the way through redesigning a curriculum. Depending on the length of time given over to activities, we envisage that this could be anywhere from a half day to full day workshop.
Not to be read aloud…
Add in link to video.
. Participants could work in pairs or small groups for this exercise. If the session is small enough, they could be ask to be prepared to share their learning activity with the group, so flipboard paper or another medium could be distributed.