5.3 Tuning into Threshold Concepts: Reflective Practices for Identifying Threshold Concepts

Chris Eaton, Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, Institute for Scholarship in University Pedagogy (ISUP), UTM                                                  
Claire Gouveia, PhD candidate, OISE
Sheliza Ibrahim, Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, ISUP, UTM
Kathleen Scheaffer, Librarian, UTM
Joanna Szurmak, Librarian, UTM
Michelle Troberg, Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, DLS, UTM

Finding the Frequency: Clarity, Purpose, and What Matters Most   

As learners, we have experienced moments in which we tuned into a previously difficult concept as it resolved into a clear and resonant signal. Such moments took us from a noisy liminal state into a place of conceptual clarity. As instructors, many of us are trying to help our own students pass those “threshold” moments in our classrooms. As Timmermans and Meyer (2019) noted, however, this is far from a straightforward process. Today’s jam session is designed to help teachers facilitate these moments of clarity for learners.

The idea of threshold concepts (TCs) was first proposed by Meyer and Land (2003) to characterize conceptual gateways leading to new ways of understanding core concepts in a discipline. They have since been applied across disciplines, including computer programming (Kallia, 2020), literary studies (Corrigan, 2019), and writing pedagogy (Adler-Kassner & Wardle, 2015). TCs have been characterized as initially troublesome to grasp, but ultimately transformative, irreversible, and crucial for further learning and full academic participation (Cousin, 2008; Meyer & Land, 2005). Threshold concepts have also proven useful because they lend themselves to catalyzing cross-disciplinary scholarship areas such as metacognitive skills development and critical thinking (McLean, 2009).

In today’s workshop, we will introduce, scaffold, and apply reflective practices that lead to the identification of threshold concepts (TCs) within and across disciplines. We will start with an introduction to TC scholarship drawing principally on Meyer and Land (2003) and several other recent applications, followed by an opportunity to complete a guided individual reflection facilitating TC awareness through a Decoding the Disciplines framework to approaching threshold concepts following Middendorf & Pace (2004). The workshop will conclude with a group debrief focused on both the process and the outcomes.