Embedding Threshold Concepts - Working Papers and Readings

Working Papers

Working Paper 1

Threshold Concepts: how can we recognise them? (pdf document)

Peter Davies

Abstract A threshold concept is defined by Meyer and Land (2003) as possessing the following qualities: transformative, integrative, bounded, and probably irreversible. This concept provides a promising way of interpreting the learning demand presented by subjects and Meyer and Land have begun to apply the idea in analysing learning economics. It redefines the familiar idea of a 'powerful concept' in a social constructivist context, providing a penetrating tool for the analysis of the development of discipline specific learning. This paper examines some difficulties to be faced in the operationalisation of the idea of 'threshold concepts' in economics and, in so doing, begins to identify ways in which these problems might be overcome.

Working Paper 2

Recognising Threshold Concepts: an exploration of different approaches (pdf document)

Peter Davies and Jean Mangan

Abstract This working paper briefly reviews the idea of ‘Threshold Concepts’ and considers the application of this to the progress of learning in economics. We suggest that a distinction between basic, threshold discipline and modelling concepts may be useful in determining a framework for the identification of threshold concepts in economics. We argue that it may be appropriate to think in terms of a web of threshold concepts within the subject. A range of evidence is presented to illustrate the existence and implications of threshold concepts in economics.

Working Paper 3

Embedding Threshold Concepts: from theory to pedagogical principles to learning activities (pdf document)

Peter Davies and Jean Mangan

Abstract In this paper we develop an account of the problems confronting learners by blending insights from threshold concepts and variation theory. In particular, we use both of these ideas to develop a coherent account of the structure of understanding and the implications for learning in the disciplines. On this basis we propose four pedagogic principles and describe three types of activity that seek to operationalise these principles. We report briefly on experience in using these activities in a project 'embedding threshold concepts in first-year undergraduate economics' in four universities in England. We comment on some implications of this experience.

Working Paper 4

Trajectories of students' learning: threshold concepts and subject learning careers (pdf document)

Peter Davies and Jean Mangan

Abstract Threshold concepts provide a fruitful way of revisiting the notion of 'learning careers' (Bloomer and Hodkinson, 2000; Bloomer, 2001) in the context of students' acquisition of the ways of thinking and practising of a particular discipline (McCune and Hounsell, 2005). Most students in Higher Education are following courses of study that induct them into the practices of a particular discipline, field or profession. The social context of their learning is framed by their experience of the particular academic community with which they are engaging. They are 'learning biology' or 'learning to nurse'. Threshold concepts (Meyer and Land, 2005) offer a helpful way of characterising the trajectories of students' experience of learning in these contexts.

Meyer and Land (2005) suggest that within each discipline, field or profession there are threshold concepts which integrate and define the scope of the academic community with which a student is engaging. We suggest that students' progress towards a deepening engagement with these communities: (1) the early stages of a subject learning career involve the acquisition of 'building blocks' which at that stage cannot be understood in the way that a master of the subject would understand them, because the learner has not yet acquired the relevant threshold concepts; (2) as students become aware of threshold concepts they face a major stage in their subject learning career, since acquisition of a threshold concept will help students to integrate and reinterpret their previous learning; (3) as students meet further threshold concepts these in turn may transform their understanding of threshold concepts they have previously acquired. Students' responses to these different aspects of their subject learning career may have profound implications for their progress and achievement.

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