Threshold Concept Theory Research Articles

Understanding the uncomfortable kōkako: the challenge of applying threshold concepts in Māori studies

There are Māori studies programmes in all eight New Zealand universities and thousands of Māori studies students enrol each year. However, little research has been done on the scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL) within the Māori studies discipline. This article investigates, through the process of an integrative literature review, the potential to apply the theory of threshold concepts (Meyer & Land 2006) – the idea that there is a set of transformational concepts that can unlock understanding in any discipline – to the Māori studies discipline. It highlights issues that arise in applying threshold concepts to a relatively new discipline that centres Indigenous knowledge and practices. The transformative elements of Māori studies and the irreversible change that Western epistemologies have caused to Māori studies’ knowledge are discussed. The bounded aspect of Māori studies is canvased, as well as the ability of Māori studies to integrate with other cognate disciplines. The troublesome nature of Māori studies content is explored, along with the discursive elements of its formal and coded curricula. Also, the idea of liminality is examined, as a way to demarcate the academic territory of Māori studies and clarify the curriculum. Ultimately, many questions emerge in this article but also opportunities to advance the SOTL research in both threshold concepts as a theory and Māori studies as a discipline.
 
 How to cite this article:
 HALL, Meegan; ADDS, Peter; ROSS, Mike; BORELL, Phillip. Understanding the uncomfortable kōkako: the challenge of applying threshold concepts in Māori studies. Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in the South, [S.l.], v. 1, n. 1, p. 91-107, sep. 2017. Available at: <http://sotl-south-journal.net/?journal=sotls&page=article&op=view&path%5B%5D=15>. Date accessed: 12 Sep. 2017.
 This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Threshold concepts in higher education: a synthesis of the literature relating to measurement of threshold crossing

ABSTRACTIn relation to teaching and learning approaches that improve student learning outcomes, threshold concepts have generated substantial interest in higher education. They have been described as ‘portals’ that lead to a transformed way of understanding or thinking, enabling learners to progress, and have been enthusiastically adopted to inform teaching approaches and curriculum design. A growing body of literature has critiqued the relevance and applicability of the threshold concept theory and identified threshold concepts relevant to specific disciplines. More recent research has identified how students cross these thresholds and provided measures of the successful acquisition of threshold concepts. This literature synthesis critiques existing evidence on threshold crossing and acquisition to provide a succinct and informative overview of the outcomes to date. Key questions relevant to educators and researchers investigating whether students acquire the threshold concepts associated with their teaching, arose from the literature synthesis. These were: whether or not threshold crossing can be measured; how variation in student learning can be addressed during measurement; tools that can be used for measuring threshold crossing; whether the way units or concepts are taught should alter prior to measurement, and the challenges and limitations of measuring threshold crossing.

Technology and education: theoretical reflections exemplified in Religious Education

How do recent technological advances impact upon the field of education? This article examines the work of the philosopher of technology Bernard Stiegler and his interpretation of technology as pharmakon (both remedy and poison). This is linked to threshold concept theory which advocates more creative ways of learning, and illustrated through a practical example from a new approach to Religious Education (RE). It will be argued that it is possible to construct educational assemblages more conducive to personal and spiritual development.

Transformative insights: A synthesis of threshold concept theory and graduate attributes

This theoretical study proposes a set of ‘transformative insights’ that transcend disciplinary boundaries and point to a common educational foundation at undergraduate level. It involved a review of disciplinary threshold concepts, followed by thematic analyses of institutional and programme level graduate profiles from New Zealand universities. Twelve common clusters of graduate attributes were identified, but their potential as cross-disciplinary threshold concepts was found to be problematic. This led to the alternative proposal that six transformative insights occur during undergraduate education: discernment of underlying beliefs, assumptions, values and expectations; epistemological positioning; linguistic nuance; engagement as a learner; thinking critically, analytically and creatively; and ethical awareness and integrity. Transformative insights reflect a synthesis of threshold concepts and graduate attributes, and support institution-wide approaches to teaching, learning and curriculum development. Further research to establish an empirical basis for the utility of transformative insights and explore their relationship to disciplinary threshold concepts is proposed.

The Threshold of Conscience: A Radical Challenge for Education in Theological Ethics … and Beyond

In this article I propose that the phenomenon of conscience, as understood in Catholic theological ethics, functions as a threshold concept within that discipline. As such, it shares the characteristics identified by Meyer and Land [2006a. “Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: An Introduction.” In Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge, edited by J. Meyer and R. Land, 3–18. Hoboken: Taylor & Francis] as pertaining to threshold concepts, and thereby presents substantial challenges for education within theological ethics. The article begins by analysing conscience as a threshold concept. It then puts forward a teaching intervention which is informed by threshold concepts theory and other relevant pedagogical research.

The Exodus in the Bible's Teaching and Our Teaching of the Bible: Helping to Reconcile Faith and Critical Study of the Bible Through Threshold Concept Theory

For students coming from a religious background to Biblical Studies, it can sometimes be difficult to reconcile faith and critical study of the Hebrew Bible, struggling with the concepts of multiple voices within the text, and multiple methods of interpretation in scholarship. This article will explore the use of the Exodus event as a Threshold Concept in the Bible's teaching, and propose that it can be used as a helpful model for students encountering critical study of the Bible. It will be shown that the Exodus event has differing accounts and multiple interpretations throughout the Bible, and that these function according to the characteristics of a Threshold Concept, by being transformative, integrative, troublesome and affective [Meyer, Jan H. F., and Ray L. Land. 2006a. ‘Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: An Introduction’. In Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold Concepts an Troublesome Knowledge, edited by Jan Meyer and Ray Land, 3-18. London: Routledge]. This analysis ...

‘Tell Me the Landscapes in Which You Live and I Will Tell You Who You Are’ – Online Theology Students Crossing Thresholds in Religious Education and Spirituality Against an Australian Desert Context

This article proposes that in the crossing of learning thresholds, it is possible to identify a number of significant intersections between three key areas – (1) stories about teaching challenges provided by an initial survey of 60 selected online adults studying religious education (RE), spirituality and theology; (2) the crossing of the Australian bush, frontier, or desert landscape; and (3) threshold concept (TC) theory. This survey of online teacher views revealed five specific teacher learning challenges that could be compared with five selected features of the Australian bush or desert landscape. Narratives of teacher learning challenges were extracted from a range of online discussion scripts, while certain features of the Australian landscape emerged from a later, unplanned literature analysis of that topic. This article examines two of these thematic clusters, related to liminality and to ‘stretching’ of teachers, in relation to desert literature and TC theory. The article closes with a series of conclusions and discussion points emerging from the research.

Threshold concept theory as an enabling constraint: a facilitated practitioner action research study

International interest is growing in how threshold concept theory can transform tertiary teaching and learning. A facilitated practitioner action research project investigating the potential of threshold concepts across several disciplines offers a practical contribution and helps to consolidate this international field of research. In this article we show how a focus on threshold concept theory enabled tertiary teachers to work collaboratively to investigate tertiary pedagogical practices. The purpose of the article is to argue that threshold concept theory can serve as a guiding principle of pedagogical design. The article draws on findings from a research study conducted over two years by a team consisting of five practitioner researchers in four disciplines and two educational researchers who facilitated the inquiry. The act of constraining the research to thresholds, both in and across different fields, enabled the team to intensify discipline-specific insights and to explore wider cross-disciplinary links and differences. A threshold-constrained focus entailed making specific discipline, knowledge management, and pedagogic practices explicit to ourselves as individual practitioners and comprehensible enough to enable conversations with colleagues from other disciplines. As a result of the research, we argue that threshold-concept thinking enables three processes: usefully unsettling the meaning of being a disciplinary expert; providing a structured framework for both disciplinary and cross-disciplinary knowledge and learning; and intensifying insight into curricular content and teaching methods. We also provide an account of how the collaborative action research sparked fresh experiments, searches for new data, and reflections on the impact of threshold concepts on individual disciplines and beyond.

Threshold concept theory and nonformal education: Community-based arts learning in Palestine

Arts learning forums can provide a crucial opportunity for communities undergoing massive social upheaval to gather, reimagine, and exchange ideas. By providing multimodal expressive environments in which to explore, process, create, and share, a community arts education programme might be considered central to the sustenance of community during periods of collective trauma. Arts education programmes similarly maintain a capacity to disassemble communities, leading to greater exclusion, alienation, and dependence on foreign aid. This article critically reflects on the design of the Our Kids' Teachers programme in the Occupied Palestinian Territories, which provided workshop training in arts education methodologies to over a thousand teachers and youth leaders in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Central to this design was an application of transformative, experiential learning, which might be posited as a practical example of threshold concept theory (Land, Meyer, & Smith, 2008). While scholarly research into threshold concept learning has predominantly focused on curricula within formal education, there is a clear relevance of this educational theory to community learning forums. Moreover, when contextualised within a community arts education process, it suggests ways of designing programmes to support a humanising pedagogy.

Transformation from student to occupational therapist: Using the Delphi technique to identify the threshold concepts of occupational therapy.

Understanding and facilitating the transformation from occupational therapy student to practitioner is central to the development of competent and work-ready graduates. However, the pivotal concepts and capabilities that need to be taught and learnt in occupational therapy are not necessarily explicit. The threshold concepts theory of teaching and learning proposes that every discipline has a set of transformational concepts that students must acquire in order to progress. As students acquire the threshold concepts, they develop a transformed way of understanding content related to their course of study which contributes to their developing expertise. The aim of this study was to identify the threshold concepts of occupational therapy. The Delphi technique, a data collection method that aims to demonstrate consensus in relation to important questions, was used with three groups comprising final year occupational therapy students (n=11), occupational therapy clinicians (n=21) and academics teaching occupational therapy (n=10) in Victoria, Australia. Participants reached consensus regarding 10 threshold concepts for the occupational therapy discipline. These are: understanding and applying the models and theories of occupational therapy; occupation; evidence-based practice; clinical reasoning; discipline specific skills and knowledge; practising in context; a client-centred approach; the occupational therapist role; reflective practice and; a holistic approach. The threshold concepts identified provide valuable information for the discipline. They can potentially inform the development of competencies for occupational therapy and provide guidance for teaching and learning activities to facilitate the transformation to competent practitioner.

What are threshold concepts and how can they inform medical education?

The notion of “threshold concepts” is being widely applied and researched in many disciplines but is rarely discussed within medical education. This article is written by three medical educators who regularly draw on threshold concept theory in their work. They explore here the nature of threshold concepts and describe how the theory can offer medical educators new perspectives in terms of how they design curricula, approach teaching and support learners.

Strategic Teaching of Strategic Thinking

This paper will explore strategic thinking as a threshold concept and key integrative framework within the management discipline. Threshold-concept primed applications with which to enhance both the teaching and learning of this concept will then be offered as means to also facilitate transfer of learning to other contexts, including the workplace setting. The theory of threshold concepts (cf: 1, 44), actionable and rich in explanatory merit, underpins this research and ultimately gives definition to a highly strategic approach to teaching strategic thinking.

Improving Fellowship Training in Microsurgery: A Threshold Concepts Perspective on the Curricula of Fellowship Programs.

The theory of "threshold concepts" argues that within every discipline there is knowledge that transforms understanding and leads to a previously inaccessible way of thinking, without which the learner cannot progress. This study investigates the factors influencing the development of the characteristic ways of thinking and practicing as a microsurgeon during a microsurgical fellowship. We analyze the challenges in the development of these characteristics during focused fellowship training in microsurgery, of which some could potentially represent "threshold concepts." A qualitative research methodology was followed. Semistructured interviews with trainers and trainees from microsurgical units in the United Kingdom (UK) and the United States (US) were conducted. Data were analyzed using the Dedoose (Manhattan Beach, CA) qualitative data analysis software and interpreted using the theory of "threshold concepts." Five trainees and four trainers from the UK and the US participated in this research project. Although initially some trainees had particular difficulty in developing their practical microsurgical skills, this improved rapidly with adequate practice. Cognitive skills and especially the ability to expect the unexpected and the ability recognize complications presented as a significant challenge for trainees and transformed their understandings regarding the qualities of a microsurgeon. Microsurgical fellowship curricula can be redesigned using the theory of threshold concepts, creating a dynamic framework that addresses individual trainee needs to develop the practical and cognitive skills necessary for independent practice of microsurgery.

Threshold concepts in art education: Negotiating the ambiguity in pre-service teacher identity formation

Abstract The dual nature of being simultaneously an artist and a teacher has long been recognized as a source of stress for novice and mid-career art educators. The article describes findings from a qualitative study into first-year art education students’ experiences of studio-based art courses. Data comprising interviews with six instructors and focus-group interviews with a total of twelve students revealed the extent to which the above problem takes root early on before prospective teachers have entered the classroom, and indicates a pressing need for pre-service art teacher training to address this issue. We suggest the inherent dichotomy at the heart of art education can be understood as a problematic liminal space, which students experience both on a personal as well as an institutional level, and we explore how Threshold Concept theory might serve as a key to help students fuse their conflicting identities into a coherent sense of self.

Transforming conceptual space into a creative learning place: Crossing a threshold

This article describes, discusses and reflects on a teaching and learning experiment in a first year BA course. Students were led out of the lecture room to a different space, the New Place Theatre. While this move out of the usual teaching space was appropriate for the text being studied, William Shakespeare’s The Tempest, the strategy aimed to develop students’ grasp of a critical concept we had identified as troublesome to students who had encountered it in the past: subjective interpretation. For us the concept of subjective interpretation shared the transformative and integrative, as well as the troublesome, characteristics of ‘threshold concepts’. According to threshold concept theory, threshold concepts are critical points where students may get ‘stuck’ before making ‘learning leaps’ as they journey towards a ‘new conceptual space and enter … a postliminal state in which both the learner and the learning are transformed’ (Land et al., 2010: ix). Students first participated in a collective exercise, creating the storm which opens the play through movement and vocalisation, and were then invited to intervene in a performance of the opening act, supporting the characters with whom they sympathised. Student feedback confirmed that this teaching strategy not only assisted them to grasp the concept of subjective interpretation, but also promoted transformative shifts in understanding through their active learning. A key factor in the resulting student engagement was movement to a different physical space, and a fresh, creative learning place.

Threshold concepts in finance: conceptualizing the curriculum

Graduates with well-developed capabilities in finance are invaluable to our society and in increasing demand. Universities face the challenge of designing finance programmes to develop these capabilities and the essential knowledge that underpins them. Our research responds to this challenge by identifying threshold concepts that are central to the mastery of finance and by exploring their potential for informing curriculum design and pedagogical practices to improve student outcomes. In this paper, we report the results of an online survey of finance academics at multiple institutions in Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the United Kingdom. The outcomes of our research are recommendations for threshold concepts in finance endorsed by quantitative evidence, as well as a model of the finance curriculum incorporating finance, modelling and statistics threshold concepts. In addition, we draw conclusions about the application of threshold concept theory supported by both quantitative and qualitative evidence. Our methodology and findings have general relevance to the application of threshold concept theory as a means to investigate and inform curriculum design and delivery in higher education.

Experiencing doctoral liminality as a conceptual threshold and how supervisors can use it

Doctoral students face numerous challenges along the path toward achieving a doctorate. With the experience likened to a rite of passage, many face periods of confusion and disorientation, liminal periods of being betwixt and between. Threshold concept theory, reconceived as conceptual thresholds when experienced on the doctoral level, can inform how they are understood. The aim of this research is to explore liminal experiences during the doctoral journey and offer suggestions for how supervisors can better support their learners. This qualitative narrative inquiry explored doctoral liminality amongst 23 participants coming from five countries and 19 different disciplines. Findings cut across the diversity of the participants, with their liminal experiences comprising a sense of isolation, lack of confidence and impostor syndrome, and research misalignment. Periods of liminality were rarely discussed, even after long periods of time. Findings are offered to provide guidance for supervisors to help support and scaffold their learners.

Dancing onto the page: Crossing an academic borderland

The transition of performing artists into academia has become an increasingly popular yet fraught migration, as higher learning in artistic disciplines increasingly requires teachers with an applied practical knowledge, a capacity to undertake research, and to articulate the value of performing arts knowledge within scholarly discourse (Elkins, 2009). Transitioning dancers can be expected to sort through their embodied knowledge and transferable skill-sets in order to maintain a sense of identity and autonomy within the new academic terrain (Molloy, 2013). At the same time they are required to adopt new dispositions of enquiry and approaches to knowledge production in order to thrive within the new environment of the tertiary education sector. So how might postgraduate coursework be designed to support experienced practitioners across such an academic borderland, and into the formal research culture of higher education? When we consider how enriched higher education might become through the successful immigration of experienced professional practitioners, such postgraduate course design becomes a salient educational issue. Our own journeys across this borderland have subsequently informed our co-design and implementation of Dance 724, a postgraduate course in qualitative research methods and academic writing that prepares students for independent research projects within honours, masters and doctoral degrees in dance studies. In this article we write reflectively on how Threshold Concept Theory (TCT) has guided our curricula design and pedagogic practices in this lynchpin paper. We also discuss six key thresholds that can restrain dance practitioners as they enter academia. While the focus here is on dance practitioners entering postgraduate dance studies, we suggest that the transition across an academic borderland for professional practitioners from diverse disciplines may be supported by a threshold concepts approach to postgraduate curricula design.

Transformed understandings: Subjective interpretation and the arts

This article focuses on two key stages in 2012 and 2013 research on threshold concept theory in a foundational BA course, ARTS101. Meyer, Land, and Baillie (2010) write of the need to identify the critical points where students get “stuck” so that their learning experiences may be a journey towards a new, “transformed” place of understanding (pp. ix-xii). We identified ‘subjective interpretation’ as a complex and crucial threshold concept in the arts and humanities. This multifaceted concept covers understanding the role and function of perspective, point of view, and voice in the critical appreciation and analysis of texts and other media. Our article outlines our research goals and how we constructed and revised the ARTS101 course to ascertain the points at which students were ‘stuck’ and to help students develop new and enlarged understandings. Drawing on our teaching experiences, assessment results, and students’ written and verbal responses we conclude that subjective interpretation is a troublesome concept that students at times struggle to master, but that carefully designed and aligned teaching, learning and assessment activities can assist in the journey to understanding (Meyer, Land, & Baillie, 2010). Once students have made the ‘learning leap’ they are increasingly able to locate their own viewpoint within a range of critical interpretations.

‘Crossing frontiers without a map’—the role of threshold concepts and problematic knowledge in religious education and spirituality

Earlier research has examined the potential of pedagogies of disorientation or displacement for religious education and spirituality, within a pedagogical framework shifting from secure orientation through disturbing disorientation, and towards surprising reorientation (Brueggemann, 2007; Mudge, 2013a; M. Taylor, 1987). Such articles have noted that these three movements are cyclical and repetitive in nature, and challenge teacher and student transition in teaching and learning. Yet researchers have also asserted that it remains the prerogative of each individual as to whether or not they respond to the challenge of any disorientation or reorientation that confronts them. This article focuses more specifically on the middle movement of “disturbing disorientation” within the disciplines of religious education and spirituality, what threshold concept theory refers to as “crossing the threshold or liminal zone”. In particular, it focuses on that pedagogical moment of transition into deeper and conflicted understanding of the relevant topic. It is concerned with the central issue of what transpires when students move from their “comfort zones” towards the more difficult transitions involved with threshold concepts (Land, Meyer, & Smith, 2008), a movement also referred to in the paper as a “threshold transition”. It also examines what particular thresholds were the most discomforting or disorienting for the author’s Masters students in religious education and spirituality. It does this in relation to analysis of some 600 reflection learning logs completed by the Masters students between September 2011 and November 2013 (Mudge, 2013b). Taken together, the findings from this paper have the potential to make a constructive contribution to ongoing threshold concept research, to pedagogical frameworks within religious education and spirituality, and to challenge similar frameworks within associated areas such as theology, philosophy, and other disciplines.