What we know: Designing courses for learning: Course design and activities built around threshold concepts and the use of concept inventories, can help students deal with “sticky” and “troublesome” knowledge

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Course design and activities built around threshold concepts and the use of concept inventories, can help students deal with “sticky” and “troublesome” knowledge 

What do we know?

This comparatively recent theory argues that all disciplines have ‘threshold’ concepts – concepts that it is necessary to understand if one is to move on within the discipline and that are crucial to further understanding. (A common example often given is that of ‘opportunity costs’ in the discipline of economics.)  These concepts are the ones likely to be found difficult and ‘troublesome’ by students because they challenge students’ prior knowledge and require reconceptualisation.  They are therefore the most likely places that students get ‘stuck’ in their learning, and the metaphor of ‘a portal’ has been used to describe them.  Getting through them may be difficult and painful (what has been called a ‘state of liminality’) and once successfully passed through it would be difficult, and probably impossible, to return because the learner’s views/beliefs/understandings have been so significantly changed.

 

Implications for improving student learning

In designing a programme of study it would be helpful to identify the key concepts, and which of those that would be seen as threshold concepts, and consider the logical structure of conceptual development of these in the course.  Threshold concepts in particular will need sufficient time, and activities designed around them to help students through the ‘state of liminality’ in ‘unlearning’ previously held views and the acquisition of new understanding.

The development and use of concept inventories (a criterion referenced test designed to assess whether a student truly understands a set of concepts) may help faculty to identify where the students are, both ‘before’ and ‘after’ given inputs and set tasks, and also to monitor general student progress regarding conceptual development through the programme.  It is especially important to try and identify student misconceptions and, at the appropriate time, to help them, through carefully designed activities, to deconstruct them (e.g. see A Private Universe, referenced above).

Further reading

Meyer, J.H.F. et al (Eds) (2010) Threshold Concepts and Transformational Learning, Rotterdam: Sense Publishers

Land, R. et al (Eds) (2008) Threshold Concepts within the Disciplines, Rotterdam: Sense Publishers