Defining the Threshold Concept Framework (TCF)

The threshold concept framework (TCF) emerged from the ‘Enhancing Teaching- Learning Environments in Undergraduate Courses’ project involving several UK universities and was proposed as an approach to understand student variation in learning within disciplines (Meyer & Land, 2006). The TCF suggests that within any discipline there are certain conceptual

gateways or portals that once traversed, lead to new ways of understanding (Meyer & Land, 2005; Meyer, Land, & Baillie, 2010; Quinlan et al., 2013). The term threshold concept (TC) was adopted by Meyer and Land (2003) as a way of describing and understanding how student learning develops and is defined 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. (p.3)

Once the portal is traversed the student holds a changed conceptual understanding with an accompanying shift in subjectivity. This transformation can be sudden or protracted over time, with the learning journeys taking different courses; such journeys often present as

Meyer and Land (2003) identified five defining characteristics of a TC as transformative, irreversible, integrative, bounded and troublesome. Further work identified the discursive nature of TCs and their reconstitutive characteristics (Land, Meyer, & Smith, 2008). TCs are transformative in that once the threshold is crossed, the learner experiences a significant shift in their perception of the subject and there is a transition from one state of knowing to another. This shift of understanding can bring with it an ontological shift in transformation of identity as the learner’s new understandings become “part of what he [sic] knows, who he is and how he feels” (Cousin 2006a, p.135). Transformation therefore also includes an affective dimension. Walker (2013) suggested that the idea of transformation is so powerful within the TCF that it can be viewed as a superordinate category under which the other characteristics can be grouped. Indeed in later work Land, Meyer and Flanagan (2016) confirmed transformation as the non- negotiable characteristic of a TC.

A characteristic of the transformation occurring with the acquisition of a TC is that it is likely to be irreversible. Whilst further transformation may take place, it is unlikely to be in the reverse direction. This idea of irreversibility points to the difficulty discipline experts may experience in attempting to look back across thresholds. From their own transformed perspective they may struggle to understand the difficulties faced by students yet to cross the threshold, still holding an untransformed view (Meyer & Land, 2006; Walker, 2013).

TCs are integrative in the way that they help learners identify the relationships between multiple concepts within a discipline that may previously have been hidden. A TC enables the disparate aspects of learning within that discipline to come together as the learner makes connections, often with other TCs (Meyer & Land, 2006; Davies & Mangan, 2007).

TCs tend to be bounded in that they “serve as boundary markers for the conceptual spaces that constitute disciplinary terrain” (Land, Meyer, & Smith, 2008, p.x). As TCs are discipline specific, meaning is related to the thinking and reasoning associated with that particular discipline, this provides learners with an understanding different to that of a lay perspective. However, as Cousin (2008b) points out, a TC should be regarded as provisional in the sense that they are not ‘fixed truths’ about a subject. Where competing paradigms exist within a discipline, as discussed within chapter two in relation to recovery, there may be a divergence of views regarding what constitutes a TC.

Land, Meyer and Smith (2008) stated that the learning journey begins when students are faced with troublesome knowledge. Troublesomeness is of major pedagogical importance as

progression cannot be achieved without overcoming it. TCs can be problematic for students in that they constitute knowledge that is challenging or difficult to come to terms with, although Land (2011) highlighted that knowledge often needs to cause difficulty to provoke students to leave their prevailing views behind and move on to seeing the concept in a new way. The characteristic of troublesome knowledge and its potential to pose significant challenges to students led Perkins (2007) to identify the TCF as a theory of difficulty as it is concerned with obstacles of content: “it foregrounds what parts or aspects of content persistently prove troublesome for learners and why” (p.33). Perkins (1999) first presented the notion of troublesome knowledge and identified the five different categories of ritual, inert,

conceptually difficult, foreign and tacit. Perkins (1999) went on to suggest there may be other troublesome factors relating to the complexity of knowledge. Meyer and Land (2003, 2006) identified troublesome language as a further category.

Ritual knowledge refers to that which has a routine way of giving answers to questions. Perkins (2006) argued that it feels “like part of a social or an individual ritual: how we answer when

asked such and such, the routine that we execute to get a particular result” (p.37). Perkins (2006) suggested lists of names and dates would fall into this category; whilst Meyer and Land (2003) identified that the use of graphs in economics can also highlight this form of knowledge, where students can diagrammatically explain a model, but have little understanding of the complexity it represents.

Inert knowledge is that which “sits in the minds attic, dusted off only when specifically called for” (Perkins, 2006, p.37), there is little connection made between ideas or knowledge gained and the real world it can apply to. Perkins offered the examples of passive vocabulary where words are understood but rarely used, and mathematical techniques where there is a failure to connect them to everyday application.

Whilst Perkins (1999) suggested conceptually difficult knowledge is particularly encountered in mathematics and science, his acknowledgement that it occurs across all curricula is apposite, where misimpressions, mistaken expectations and complexity of views make grasping

concepts difficult. Health and health care are topics of relevance to everyday experience, such lay knowledge gained through personal experience or media portrayals etc. may result in different understandings from those within the discipline, which may inhibit further learning. Furthermore mental health nursing is a field with differing conceptual frameworks and models of practice which may be encountered as challenging in their complexity.

Foreign or alien knowledge is that which comes from a differing perspective to our own, maybe counter-intuitive and may not even be recognised as foreign (Perkins, 1999). Shanahan and Meyer (2006) identified alien knowledge in their study of economics students where one respondent, in taking an ‘outsider’ position, spoke of what ‘economist’s would do’ rather than that which they may do or think themselves in economic terms. Cheek (2010) identified that

for geology students the notion of deep time is troublesome because of issues of scale, whereby the process involves such slow rate of movement imperceptible to the human eye that it is out with the student experience. The idea that one day the mountains we see today will one day be gone is alien and counter-intuitive.

The term tacit knowledge was conceived by Polayni in the 1950s where he used it in consideration of the nature of scientific knowledge. Polayni (1967) suggested that tacit knowledge was personal knowledge, implicitly known but that which could not be articulated. Tacit knowledge is part of non- formal learning and since Polanyi’s original work has acquired a range of meanings (Eraut 2000). Evans and Donnelly (2006) argued that “tacit knowledge is a generally unarticulated, pre- conscious form of knowledge that forms a basis for human judgement and decision making” (p.152). In nursing literature tacit knowledge is often referred to as intuition (although other authors have separated the two) and has been explained as “patterns that are developed to the point where they are automatically brought to mind” (Evans & Donnelly, 2006, p.152). In nursing practice knowing when and how to use a particular skill can be viewed as intuitive or tacit knowledge.

Further consideration of TC characteristics led Meyer and Land (2005) to also emphasise the discursive nature of TCs in that new ways of understanding are associated with new forms of expression that often characterise the ways of thinking within the discipline, this may involve natural, formal or symbolic language. Whilst this discursive aspect might be motivating for some in generating new insights, it can also present as an epistemological obstacle which impedes further development. This discursive nature of TCs also gives rise to a reconstitution of the learner’s subjectivity. The learner’s identity, thinking and use of language are inter- related, with transformation of identity accompanying transformation of thinking and adoption of a disciplinary discourse.

Davies and Mangan (2007) described the defining characteristics of transformative, integrative and irreversible as interwoven, suggesting that if a concept is integrative and changes a learner’s perception of their prior understanding, then it must necessarily be transformative. Similarly if a concept is integrative and holds together a learner’s thinking on a range of ideas then it is more likely to be irreversible, as to abandon these ideas would disrupt the learner’s whole way of thinking. The conceptual gateway is often the point that students experience difficulties as they are required to ‘let go’ of prior ways of knowing which may be familiar or customary and face knowledge potentially alien or counter intuitive (Perkins, 1999). This space of conceptual change is referred to as the liminal space (Meyer & Land, 2005).