Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge
Implications for curriculum design
Ray Land,
‘The Lost Art of Curriculum Design’ University of Hull 2nd July 2013
Troublesome knowledge
‘The path of least resistance and least trouble is a
mental rut already made.
It requires troublesome work to undertake the
alteration of old beliefs.’
John Dewey 1933
Real learning requires
stepping into the unknown,
which initiates a rupture in
knowing...
By definition, all TC
scholarship is concerned
(directly or indirectly) with
encountering the unknown.
Schwartzman 2010 p.38
pax intrantibus, salus exeuntibus (1609)
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethro’
Gleams that untravell’d world,whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
Tennyson ‘Ulysses’
The only real voyage of discovery consists not in seeing
new landscapes, but in having new eyes, in seeing the
universe with the eyes of another.
Marcel Proust, 1900
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Threshold concepts
Liminality
Troublesome knowledge
Episteme (the underlying game)
Causes of conceptual
(or other)
difficulty?
The role of the teacher is to arrange
victories for the students
Quintilian 35-100 AD
The prevailing discourse of ‘outcomes’,
‘alignment’ and ‘achievement’ has, from
critical perspectives, been deemed to
serve managerialist imperatives without
necessarily engaging discipline-based
academics in significant
reconceptualisation or review of their
practice.
(cf.Newton, 2000).
Academics’ own definitions of quality would
seem to remain predominantly disciplinecentred
(cf. Henkel, 2000:106).
Notion that within specific disciplines there exist
significant ‘threshold concepts’, leading to new
and previously inaccessible ways of thinking
about something.
(Meyer and Land, 2003).
‘Concept?’
‘a unit of thought or element of knowledge
that allows us to organize experience’
Janet Gail Donald (2001)
‘Learning to Think: Disciplinary Perspectives’
James Joyce’s ‘epiphany’
— the ‘revelation of the whatness of a thing’.
But threshold concepts are both more
constructed and re-constitutive than revelatory,
and not necessarily sudden.
(eurhka!)
Threshold Concepts
Akin to a portal, a liminal space, opening up a
new and previously inaccessible way of
thinking about something.
Represents a transformed way of
understanding, or interpreting, or viewing
something without which the learner finds it
difficult to progress, within the curriculum as
formulated.
Threshold Concepts
As a consequence of comprehending a
threshold concept there may thus be a
transformed internal view of subject matter,
subject landscape, or even world view.
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.
However the engagement by the learner with an unfamiliar
knowledge terrain and the ensuing reconceptualisation may
involve a reconstitution of, or shift within, the learner’s
subjectivity, and perhaps identity.
Ontological implications. Learning as ‘a change in subjectivity’.
(Pelletier 2007).
‘The moment we recognise that the self is not
something ready-made, but something in continuous
formation through choice of action, the whole
situation clears up’
John Dewey 1916 p.235)
Liminality
• a transformative state that
engages existing certainties
and renders them
problematic, and fluid
• a suspended state in which
understanding can
approximate to a kind of
mimicry or lack of authenticity
• liminality as unsettling –
sense of loss
A closer look at liminality
a) conceptual space
b) ontological space
Liminality as flux
Liminality ..appears to be a ‘liquid’ space,
simultaneously transforming and being transformed by
the learner as he or she moves through it.
(Meyer & Land 2005 p.380)
Transformative
‘The condition of
liminality may be
transformative in
function; there may be
a change of state or
function’
(Meyer & Land 2006 p.22)
oscillative
You know, I understood the concept for about let’s say
10 seconds, yes yes, I got that and then suddenly, no no,
I didn’t get that, you know, suddenly, like this.
(M. Orsini-Jones 2006)
discursive
Indissoluble interrelatedness of the learner’s identity
with thinking and language (reading, writing, listening,
talking).
... students acquire a point of view and terminology of a
technical kind, which allow them to talk and think about
patients and diseases in a way quite different from the
layman. They look upon death and disabling disease, not with
the horror and sense of tragedy the layman finds appropriate,
but as problems in medical responsibility.
(Becker, Geer, Hughes and Strauss, 2005, p. 421)
potentially creative?
No, I think you’re misunderstanding me... we’re not talking here
about our students coming out of this liminal space..this liminality,
whatever ..We’re saying we want them to stay in it. We want them
to stay precisely in that fluid state .. That complexity .. that
emergence, because in that way their ideas won’t become
crystallised, they won’t harden and get stylised. Their ideas will
stay emergent ...provisional, exploratory ... Still with lots of
unexplored possibilities .. Fresh. That’s what we want. Keeping
that way of seeing . We want them .. and their ideas .. to stay held
in that tension.
That’s the creative space.
(Lecturer, Art School)
Mimicry (coping)
a student in a ‘stuck place’, having glimpsed the outline of a
threshold portal and perhaps only vaguely aware of what lies
beyond it, but conscious of the failure to cross it, may engage in
forms of mimicry.
(Meyer & Land p. 2006 p.24)
Progressive function of the liminal state
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Countenancing and integration of something new
Recognition of shortcoming of existing view
Letting go of the older prevailing view
Letting go of an earlier mode of their subjectivity
Envisaging (and accepting) an alternative version of
self through the threshold space (as a practitioner) ‘re authoring’ of self. ‘undoing the script’ (Ross 2011)
• Acquiring and using new forms of written and spoken
discourse and internalising these
Student Voices
First student: I understood it in class, it was when we
went away and I just seemed to have completely
forgotten everything that we did on it, and I think that
was when I struggled because when we were sat in
here, we’d obviously got help if we had questions
but…..when it came to applying it….I understood the
lectures and everything that we did on it but couldn’t
actually apply it, I think that was the difficulty.
from G. Cousin, Journal of Learning Development Feb 2010
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Q. Did you feel the same as student 1?
Second student: Yeah. I felt lost.
Q. In lecture times as well?
Second student: You know, I understood the concept
for about let’s say 10 seconds, yes yes, I got that and
then suddenly, no no, I didn’t get that, you know,
suddenly, like this.
from G. Cousin, Journal of Learning Development Feb 2010
• Well, from not knowing what it is to knowing what it
is, that is the big step one. So that can be knowing
how to apply the concepts that we use.
• There are some things you learn, you suddenly think,
wow, suddenly everything seems different…you now
see the world quite differently.
from G. Cousin, Journal of Learning Development Feb 2010
Marine biology
Osmosis is counter-intuitive, it goes the opposite
way. When does it click? When you study marine fish
in 2nd or 3rd year, you see what would happen; it’s in
a relevant situation. In first year you do mechanisms
in blocks and there’s no relevance
Taylor 2008, p. 191
... and eminent academics
Perhaps I can best describe my experience of doing
mathematics in terms of a journey through a dark,
unexplored mansion. You enter the first room of the
mansion and it’s completely dark. You stumble around
bumping into furniture, but gradually you learn where
each piece of the furniture is. Finally, after six months
or so, you find the light switch, you turn it on, and
suddenly it’s all illuminated … Then you move into the
next room and spend another six months in the dark
(Mathematician Sir Andrew Wiles , cited in Land, Meyer and Smith 2008, p. 69)
Janus – divinity of the threshold
epistemological
ontological
Characteristics of a
threshold concept
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integrative
transformative
irreversible
bounded
re-constitutive
discursive
troublesome
East of Eden
through the threshold
Some natural tears they dropped, but wiped them soon;
The world was all before them, where to choose
Their place of rest, and Providence their guide.
They, hand in hand, with wandering steps and slow,
Through Eden took their solitary way.
John Milton (Paradise Lost, Book XII; 1667)
Examples
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Pure Maths – ‘complex number, a limit’, the Fourier transform’
Literary Studies – ‘signification, deconstruction, ethical reading’
Economics – ‘opportunity cost, price, elasticity’
Design – ‘Confidence to challenge’
Computer Science – ‘programming’, ‘Y and Recursion’
Exercise Physiology – ‘metabolism’
Law - ‘precedence’
Accounting - ‘depreciation’
Biology, Psychology - ‘evolution’
Politics – ‘the state’
Engineering – ‘reactive power’, ‘spin’
History – ‘Asiatic Conceptions of Time’
Comparative Religion– ‘Biblical texts as Literary Texts’
Plant Science ‘Photoprotection’
Health Science – ‘Care’
Physics – ‘Gravity’
Geology - ‘Geologic Time’
Transactional curriculum inquiry
(Cousin 2009, pp. 201-212)
• What do academics consider to be fundamental to a
grasp of their subject?
• What do students find difficult to grasp?
• What curriculum design interventions can support
mastery of these difficulties?
Troublesome Knowledge
When troubles come they come not single spies, but in battalions
(Hamlet Act 4 Sc 5 ll 83-84)
looking for trouble
• Knowledge is troublesome for a variety of reasons
(Perkins 2006). It might be alien, inert, tacit,
conceptually difficult, counter-intuitive, characterised
by an inaccessible ‘underlying game’, or
characterised by supercomplexity.
• such troublesomeness and disquietude is purposeful,
as it is the provoker of change that cannot be
assimilated, and hence is the instigator of new
learning and new ontological possibility.
Troublesome knowledge
• ritual knowledge
• inert knowledge
• conceptually difficult
knowledge
• the defended learner
• alien knowledge
• tacit knowledge
• loaded knowledge
• troublesome language
Episteme: ‘the underlying game’
‘…a system of ideas or way of understanding that
allows us to establish knowledge. ..the importance of
students understanding the structure of the disciplines
they are studying. ‘Ways of knowing’ is another phrase
in the same spirit. As used here, epistemes are
manners of justifying, explaining, solving problems,
conducting enquiries, and designing and validating
various kinds of products or outcomes.’ (Perkins 2006 p.42)
‘knowledge practices’
(Strathearn 2008)
knowledge within a community of
practice
‘…includes all the implicit relations, tacit
conventions, subtle cues, untold rules of thumb,
recognizable intuitions, …., embodied
understandings, underlying assumptions, and
shared world view.’
(Wenger 1998)
Double trouble: ‘games of enquiry’
Concepts can prove difficult both in their categorical
function and in the activity systems or ‘games of
enquiry’ they support. Not only content concepts but the
underlying epistemes of the disciplines make trouble for
learners, with confusion about content concepts often
reflecting confusion about the underlying epistemes.
(Perkins 2006 p.45)
Discipline Model from Electrical
Engineering (Foley 2011)
Task: using threshold concepts
• Try and identify a TC – why is it fundamental to a
grasp of the subject?
• What misunderstandings do students
characteristically exhibit?
• Why might mastery be troublesome?
• When does this mastery typically happen?
• In what ways can mastery change the learner’s
relation to the subject?
• How do we typically teach / assess these concepts?
Intellectual uncertainty
‘Intellectual uncertainty is not necessarily or simply a
negative experience, a dead-end sense of not
knowing, or of indeterminacy. It is just as well an
experience of something open, generative,
exhilarating, (the trembling of what remains
undecidable). I wish to suggest that ‘intellectual
uncertainty’ is ..a crucial dimension of any teaching
worthy of the name.’
(Royle 2003 : 52)
Venturing into
strange places
The student is perforce
required to venture into new
places, strange places,
anxiety-provoking places .
This is part of the point of
higher education. If there
was no anxiety, it is difficult
to believe that we could be
in the presence of a higher
education.
(Barnett 2007: 147)
Pedagogies of uncertainty
In these settings, the presence of emotion, even a
modicum of passion, is quite striking--as is its absence in
other settings. I would say that without a certain amount
of anxiety and risk, there's a limit to how much learning
occurs.
One must have something at stake. No emotional
investment, no intellectual or formational yield.
(Shulman 2005:4)
Considerations
for Course
(Re)Design
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jewels in the curriculum
Threshold concepts can be used to
define potentially powerful transformative
points in the student’s learning
experience. In this sense they may be
viewed as the ‘jewels in the curriculum’.
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importance of engagement
Existing literature regarding teachers who want
students to develop genuine understanding of a
difficult concept points to the need for engagement
eg. They must ask students to
explain it
represent it in new ways
apply it in new situations
connect it to their lives
and NOT simply recall the concept in the form in
which it was presented (Colby, et.al, 2003: p263)
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listening for understanding
However, teaching for understanding
needs to be preceded by listening for
understanding.
We can’t second guess where students
are coming from or what their
uncertainties are. It is difficult for
teachers to gaze backwards across
thresholds.
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reconstitution of self
Grasping a concept is never just a
cognitive shift; it also involves a
repositioning of self in relation to the
subject. This means from the viewpoint
of curriculum design that some attention
has to be paid to the discomforts of
troublesome knowledge
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recursiveness
The need for the learner to grasp threshold
concepts in recursive movements means that
they cannot be tackled in a simplistic 'learning
outcomes' model where sentences like 'by the
end of the course the learner will be able to....’
undermine the complexities of the
transformation a learner undergoes (postliminal variation). Consideration of threshold
concepts to some extent ‘rattles the cage’ of a
linear, outcomes-based approach to curriculum
design.
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tolerating uncertainty
Learners tend to discover that what is not clear
initially often becomes clear over time. So
there is a metacognitive issue for the student
(self-regulation within the liminal state) and a
need for the teacher to provide a ‘holding
environment' (Winnicott 1960)
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Dynamics of Assessment
• Implies need to reconsider the nature of stimulus
(task question), protocol (method) and signification
(what constitutes the required performance) in
assessment practices
• Why do some students productively negotiate the
liminal space and others find difficulty in doing so?
Does such variation explain how the threshold will
be, or can be, or can only be approached (or turned
away from) as it ‘comes into view’? And how does it
‘come into view’?
• problem of signification of a particular understanding
when the concept is outwith the domain of prior
experience
• need to monitor progress by revealing thought
processes that generally remain private and
troublesome to the learner (Cohen, 1987).
• in traditional assessment, a student can produce the
‘right’ answer while retaining fundamental
misconceptions (Marek, 1986).
• potential value of concept mapping to explore such
variation (Kinchin and Hay 2006)
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the underlying game
The need to recognise the ‘games of
enquiry we play’ (Perkins 2006). Disciplines
are more than bundles of concepts. They
have their own characteristic epistemes.
Need for students to recognise the
‘underlying episteme’ or game and
develop epistemic fluency.
http://www.ee.ucl.ac.uk/~mflanaga/thresholds.html
The expanding
framework
78
discipilinary/subject
categories
Year
No of
refs.
2003 2
2004 3
2005 6
2006 33
2007 35
2008 51
Mick Flanagan, UCL
18 theses and
dissertations
2009 53
2010 114
2011
293
2012 405
2013 502
Links to video, ppt
presentations and
other TC websites
120 disciplinary/
professional
categories
TC Facebook site
Jeffrey Keefer
New York
References
•
Meyer JHF and Land R 2003
Threshold Concepts and Troublesome
Knowledge – Linkages to Ways of Thinking and
Practising’ in Improving Student Learning – Ten
Years On. C.Rust (Ed), OCSLD, Oxford
•
Meyer JHF and Land R 2005 ‘Threshold
Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge (2):
epistemological considerations and a conceptual
framework for teaching and learning’ Higher
Education, May.
•
Land, R., Cousin, G., Meyer, J. H. F. & Davies,
P. (2005) Threshold concepts and troublesome
knowledge (3): implications for course design
and evaluation, in: C. Rust (Ed.) Improving
student learning: diversity and inclusivity (Oxford,
OCSLD), 53–64.
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