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

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