CHAPTER 3 APPLYING A THRESHOLD CONCEPTS FRAMEWORK
3.2 A threshold concepts enquiry into learning
Threshold concepts theory was introduced by Meyer and Land (2003) based on their experiences in economics education. Their findings were part of a UK-wide research project entitled Enhancing Teaching and Learning Environments in Undergraduate Courses. Meyer and Land inspired fellow academics and initiated robust discourse, producing a whole new body of research.27 The following presents their seminal description of a threshold concept:
A threshold concept can be considered as akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously
27 The Embedding Threshold Concepts(ETC) Project, implemented at several UK universities between 2004 and 2008, “established threshold concepts as an organising principle in research into undergraduate learning in economics” (Burchmore et al., 2007, p. 5). This project, hosted by Staffordshire University in collaboration with three other UK universities, ran from 2004-2008. The teaching materials are freely available for download from the project website at http://www.staffs.ac.uk/schools/business/iepr/etc/index.htm. A current online database listing threshold concepts-related research is maintained at http://www.ee.ucl.ac.uk/~mflanaga/thresholds.html. As of, October 2018, the site listed 74 completed PhD and Master’s theses with the threshold concepts framework being discussed as a central theme across a variety of disciplines other than economics.
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inaccessible way of thinking about something […] a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which the learner cannot progress. […] [T]here may thus be a transformed internal view of subject matter, subject landscape, or even worldview. This transformation may be sudden or it may be protracted […] with the transition to understanding proving troublesome. Such a transformed view or landscape may represent how people “think” in a particular discipline, or how they perceive, apprehend or experience particular phenomena within that discipline (or more generally). It might, […], be argued, in a critical sense, that such transformed understanding leads to a privileged or dominant view and therefore a contestable way of understanding something (Meyer & Land, 2003, p. 1).
The threshold concepts approach to learning has established itself as an organising principle into research in undergraduate economics education (Burchmore, Irvine, & Carmichael, 2007), and has rapidly been recognised in the literature in a range of other disciplines.
The threshold concepts framework speaks to debates around issues of content as well as pedagogy in the international scholarship, offering a way to conceptualise and describe learning through its interrogation of the difficulties associated with learning new content. The framework offers some broad pedagogical principles and curriculum design considerations. It does not offer itself as a ‘solution’ to learning difficulties, but rather as a lens through which awareness of such may be illuminated. The threshold concepts theory to learning requires the educator to delve deeply into her discipline with the aim of determining the best way of teaching and learning it (Cousin, 2010).In this way, the theory has initiated discussions around how threshold concepts, the “jewels” in the discipline (Land, Cousin, Meyer, & Davies, 2006), come to be identified and prioritised in the first instance.
3.2.1 Identifying and characterising threshold concepts
Every discipline has a limited number of distinctive concepts that disciplinary experts identify as being threshold concepts. An understanding of these fundamental concepts is of paramount importance if a student is to advance in her learning and understanding of the discipline. Thus, a threshold concept maybe described as being a keystone of disciplinary
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wisdom that the student must master before the student can delve deeper into the disciplinary ways of thinking and doing.
Threshold concepts are likely to have several characteristics. The essence of a threshold concept is its transformative power on the learner. It brings on, in varying degrees, epistemic and ontological shifts in the learner (Meyer, Land, & Baillie, 2010). The evolution and development of the threshold concepts framework over the years (Land, Cousin, Meyer, et al., 2005; Meyer & Land, 2003, 2005) has characterised threshold concepts, in any discipline, as likely to have several characteristics, with a focus on inter- individual variation in recent years – students’ individual encounters with a given threshold concept will vary in the degree to which they experience each feature below (Flanagan, 2018; Meyer & Land, 2006; Meyer, Land, & Davies, 2008):
• Liminality – internalisation of a threshold concept being likened to a journey or “rite of passage” within and beyond a liminal space.
• Transformation – a previously inaccessible way of thinking about something occurs; an epistemic shift.
• Integration – in the sense that previously occluded relationships between former disparately perceived aspects of the subject landscape are revealed. This revelation may be protracted or sudden in the sense of something ‘clicking together’.
• Reconstitution – a shift in learner subjectivity, a transfiguration of self, of identity; an ontological shift.
• Irreversibility – once understood, the concept cannot become ‘not-understood’. • Boundedness – each concept does not generally explain the whole of the discipline,
only a specific sub-domain, or related aspects.
• Troublesomeness – challenging, difficult to come to terms with, counter-intuitive, or requiring a suspension of disbelief.
• Discourse – crossing of a threshold will incorporate an enhanced and extended use of natural, symbolic or artificial language in a manner that characterises particular disciplinary discourses; how, for example, biologists, economists, historians,
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lawyers or sociologists think (Baillie, Bowden, & Meyer, 2012, p. 229).
This set of likely characteristics is intended to highlight the essential characteristics of a threshold concept as experienced by individual students to varying degrees, and is not meant to be interpreted as a definitional checklist. However, in recent work, the “superordinate and non-negotiable” characteristic of a threshold concept is considered to be its transformational capacity (Land, 2016, p. 16).
3.2.2 Essential features of learning in the Threshold Concepts Framework
While threshold concepts may be defined within its disciplinary context, the approach, itself, transcends disciplines in its acknowledgement of the “universality of student experiences of difficulty in encounters with content in any – and all – of their respective fields” (Schwartzman, 2010, p. 22). Essential features of learning within a threshold concepts orientation (as informed by Schwartzman’s theoretical framing (2010)) are depicted in the schematic below and explained in the subsequent paragraphs.
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Figure 2. A threshold concepts view of learning
(Based on descriptions of learning in the Threshold Concepts Framework taken from Schwartzman (2010), Land, Meyer, and Baillie (2010))
Pre-liminal Liminal Postliminal
Learner in BSTS 201 Encounter ‘troublesome knowledge’ – threshold concepts – for example: sampling distribution Engage with curriculum through teaching, learning and assessment strategies – in liminality – a suspended, unstable space of partial understanding where a learner may oscillate between old
and emergent understandings (Cousin, 2006a). Typical liminal- space induced affective characteristics, such as, uncertainty, unease, anxiety & prevailing psychological characteristics. Learner crosses threshold: gains understanding, experiences a new world view,
sense of self through the transformative, integrative, irreversible characteristics of a threshold concept Learner remains ‘stuck’: fail, withdraw, project responsibility elsewhere. Fight Flee Sub-liminal
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Acquiring a threshold concept has been described as being akin to stepping through the portal to a “previously inaccessible way of thinking” (Meyer & Land, 2003, p. 1). However, this is not always a straightforward process for students. Some threshold concepts prove to be quite the challenge for students due to a variety of reasons. This may be attributable to having to let go of previously held beliefs and accepting new information, which constitutes a disconcerting space for students to be in, since it may require an integration of ideas and a transformation of their own prevailing understanding (Land, Cousin, & Meyer, 2005).
Learning is impacted by both affective and cognitive aspects, and the assimilation of new, troublesome knowledge can unsettle a learner (Rattray, 2016). This transition in the student’sunderstanding, that is, from a less sophisticated awareness to a fuller appreciation of a concept, takes time, and during this transformative phase, the student is said to be in a liminal space. In this space, learners may oscillate between old and new understandings and may get ‘stuck’(Meyer & Land, 2005).
Variations exist between learners’ experiences of being in the liminal state. Not all learners cross the threshold to obtain a deeper understanding of the subject, whereas others may struggle for varying periods of length before finally crossing the threshold and reaching the higher ground of deeper understanding of the concept. Variations between learners are not confined to the liminal space but are evident in all stages of the process, namely, the sub- liminal (tacit understanding developed in the absence of formal knowledge of the concept), pre-liminal (initial perceptions of the threshold concept), liminal (entering it, being in it and passing through (or not) it) and post-liminal (entering into new conceptual space) (Heading & Loughlin, 2017; Meyer et al., 2008; Nicola-Richmond, Pepin, Larkin, & Taylor, 2018).
Expounding further on the cognitive-affective dynamics of students’ learning in the liminal space, Cousin (2006a, p. 4) states:
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concept that the difficulty of its mastery inheres in the concept itself […], we need to be aware that this difficulty cannot be abstracted from the learner or the social context […], the idea of liminal spaces provides a useful metaphor to aid our understanding of the conceptual transformations students undergo, and the difficulties or anxieties that attend these transformations.
Ultimately, learning is a transformative process that goes beyond cognitive and affective shifts. Traversing the liminal space does not only bring about a conceptual or cognitive change, but also entails an ontological shift, or altered worldview, and the students’ awareness of their meta-learning capacity. That is, their awareness of and control over themselves as learners (Biggs, 1985), is significant to the students’ successful passage through the liminal space (Latreille, Meyer, & Ward, 2009). Thus, the liminal space may be conceptualised as a tunnel entering a dark and foreboding place, where the final outcome is uncertain (Land, Rattray, & Vivian, 2014).
These ontological shifts brought about by the threshold transformations are associated with both cognitive and affective changes in an individual, and it is vital that an educator considers the extent to which liminality might be experienced as both a cognitive and affective state that is more easily navigated by some students than others. In recent work, Rattray (2016) advances the idea that the four factors of Psychological Capital28, namely self-efficacy, optimism, hope and resilience, might explain why some learners are able to pass through the liminal tunnel and acquire new conceptual framework, and others, despite having the intellectual capacity, are unable to make the transition. It is proposed that a learner, who believes that they are capable of understanding new ideas, who makes positive attributions in relation to their potential for success, who can monitor and re-align goals and pathways to attaining these goals, and who does not give up in spite of the difficulties they encounter with the new knowledge, is the type of learner that would successfully navigate the liminal space (Rattray, 2016, p. 73).
The importance and need for active student engagement with the conceptual material is noted above. Students should not only have a passive understanding of their discipline, but ought to be
28 The concept Psychological Capital (PsyCap), pioneered by Fred Luthans (Luthans, 2002) , suggests growth in organisations should focus on workers’ psychological rather than educational development. PsyCap has four pillars – Hope, Efficacy, Resilience and Optimism (HERO) – and has been linked to individuals’ job and as well as life satisfaction.
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able to engage with, and be critical of disciplinary concepts. In order for students to achieve critical engagement with disciplinary concepts Land, Cousin, and Meyer (2005) propose that: (i) educators be in tune with their sixth sense in order to determine students’ current understanding of concepts and to detect signs of troublesomeness; (ii) consider the ordering of concepts taught in the discipline so that it is easily assimilated, and its integrative nature is discerned by students; (ii) teachers are encouraged to call upon their sixth sense, so to speak, that pick-up on students’ current understanding that will ultimately impact on how future understanding is assimilated; and (iii) in the post-liminal state instructors are encouraged that on the excursive journey of learning, there are moments of recursion or reflection, where students are afforded a moment of pause to appreciate the interrelatedness of threshold concepts.
Discussion around the integration of threshold concepts with student learning and the curriculum abounds in the literature (Barradell & Kennedy-Jones, 2013; Cousin, 2007; Land, Cousin, & Meyer, 2005; Meyer & Land, 2006). The impact that research into threshold concepts has had on teaching and learning in the disciplines is illustrated in some of the curriculum change that have been advocated in the literature. Cousin (2007) refers to a “less is more” approach to curriculum design. The justification for this is that since, by definition,
threshold concepts refers to the key fundamentals of a discipline, streamlining the curriculum as such, means providing better value for instructors and students as more time and resources are devoted to the learning of threshold concepts (Khan, 2014). Thus, threshold concepts framework holds with a student-focused approach to teaching. It requires educators to reflect on their discipline, and to ask four crucial questions: What should be taught? Why should it be taught? And, how and when should it be taught? (Barradell & Kennedy-Jones, 2013). Educators are encouraged to identify and treat key areas of mastery in a curriculum as “jewels in the curriculum”, to cultivate a “third ear” for listening out for persistent uncertainties and misunderstandings, to design activities to determine the students’ position in the learning space - whilst demonstrating tolerance and the ability to persevere with students as they journey through the liminal space, and to take cognisance that mastery of a threshold concept is a journey of learning that often entails oscillation (recursion) across conceptual terrain (Cousin, 2006a, p. 5).
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Onus is placed on the teacher to initiate curriculum inquiry to address the difficulties of the threshold concept in order to guide the learner through the liminal space. Thus, threshold concepts research offers a form of transactional inquiry, bringing together academics, students and educationalists to work together by delving deeper into their own discipline for the purpose of formulating the best pedagogical practice, and to focus on the difficulties of the subject, rather than on general education theories (Cousin, 2010).