Lesson 3: Threshold concepts
For the very first time in my life I heard of a word "threshold" when I attended my Information Literacy in Education class on Tuesday, 22 August 2017.....this was interesting. As the lesson continued, it was surprising that what was discussed reminded me of my 1st year days at University. The stages of confusion I went through when I enrolled with the LIS Department were surprisingly referred to as "threshold"...it only makes sense now that whatever was happening was all normal.
BUT....What are Threshold concepts?
According to my understanding, threshold concepts are those stages that when a learner enters his/her first year levels at the University, they go through stages of confusion in the profession/discipline they enrolled in. This may be caused by the information literacy levels, still trying to get used to the new environment (university culture), anxiety due to how they question themselves if they have made the right decisions about the courses they selected, the new ways of teaching are different from secondary levels, the list is endless........that confusing passage that a learner goes through before they can see the light and gain more understanding and become a professional in the discipline they are in, are referred to as threshold concepts. Students need to 'get' them in order for core disciplinary knowledge to
make sense. Threshold concepts can be challenging, troubling and finally transformative.
As developed and defined by Meyer and Land (2003), 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 transformation way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something which was not previously known by the learners in the beginning stages of learning. Threshold concepts were developed by Educationalists (Meyer and Land) as a theory of teaching and learning.
Difficulty in understanding threshold concepts may leave the learner in a state of ‘liminality’, a suspended state of partial understanding, or ‘stuck place’, in which understanding approximates to a kind of ‘mimicry’ or lack of authenticity. Insights gained by learners as they cross thresholds can be exhilarating but might also be unsettling, requiring an uncomfortable shift in identity, or, a sense of loss. A further complication might be the operation of an ‘underlying game’ which requires the learner to comprehend the often tacit games of enquiry or ways of thinking and practising inherent within specific disciplinary (Land, Meyer and Baillie, 2010).
These characteristics make threshold concepts very powerful tools in exploring
teaching and learning within a discipline, according to Meyer and Land, this is how an individual should recognizes passing through threshold concepts....
(a) Transformation - on mastering a threshold concept, the learner begins to think as a professional in the discipline and not simply as a student.
(b) Integrative - threshold concepts, once learned are likely to bring together different aspects of the subject that previously did not appear to the student in the beginning.
(c) Irreversible - given their transformation potential, threshold concepts are likely to be irreversible, they are almost impossible to unlearn.
(d) Bounded - boundedness may be associated with the disciplines special language, or may be illustrated by the use of special terminology, for example, in LIS field, the classification system is referred to as "Dewey". When a learner passes the threshold phase, they tend to grasp the using of the terms specified for certain fields.
(e) Troublesome - Students come across difficult concepts that are impossible to grasp.
It was my first time also that I heard of the Theory Threshold Concepts, which initially I found difficult to grasp. And like you, I was also thinking back to my first year at university, when I was struggling to understand a lot of things.
ReplyDeleteI like that I was not the only one that had flashbacks to earlier days. My flashbacks included Physics at High School.
ReplyDeleteBut what's funny is that I also struggled to understand what "threshold concepts" are, until I read and re-read the presentation, only then I managed to get a bit of understanding
ReplyDeleteI agree that it was confusing in the beginning, but it became clearer after I spent time with the presentation.
ReplyDeleteAs the theory explained, we learn differently, some of our colleagues understood from the beginning, some grasped it as the class continued, some of us needed more time to do further readings...
ReplyDelete