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Threshold Concepts

An introduction to threshold concepts

The idea of threshold concepts emerged from a UK national research project into the possible characteristics of strong teaching and learning environments in the disciplines for undergraduate education (Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments in Undergraduate Courses - http://www.tlrp.org). In pursuing this research in the field of economics, it became clear to Erik Meyer and Ray Land (2003, 2005, 2006), that certain concepts were held by economists to be central to the mastery of their subject. These concepts, Meyer and Land argued, could be described as ‘threshold’ ones because they have certain features in common.

So how do we recognize threshold concepts? Meyer and Land present five key characteristics of a threshold concept:

Recognizing threshold concepts

So how do we recognize threshold concepts? Meyer and Land present five key characteristics of a threshold concept:

  1. Grasping a threshold concept is transformative because it involves an ontological as well as a conceptual shift. We are what we know. New understandings are assimilated into our biography, becoming part of who we are, how we see and how we feel. To illustrate, Meyer and Land (2006, p.3) give the example of a cook who comes to realise that understanding the concept in physics of heat transfer as a function of temperature gradient is key to the chef’s art. ‘Imagine’, they write ‘that you have just poured two identical cups of tea; you want to cool down one as quickly as possible, you add milk to the first cup immediately, wait a few minutes and then add milk to the second’. Intuitively, you might think the first cup will be the cooler but it is the second because ‘in the initial stages of cooling it is hotter than the first cup with the milk in it and it therefore loses more heat because of the steeper temperature gradient’. Once this principle is understood, trainee chefs will shift their attention from ingredients to the pots and pans selected for particular dishes. This kind of ‘turn’ in understanding a subject marks an important initiation into any subject culture.

  2. A threshold concept is often irreversible; once understood the learner is unlikely to forget it (this does not exclude subsequent modification or rejection of the concept for a more refined or rival understanding). One of the difficulties teachers have is that of retracing the journey back to their own days of ‘innocence’, when understandings of threshold concepts escaped them in the early stages of their own learning.

  3. Another characteristic of a threshold concept is that it is integrative in that it exposes the hidden interrelatedness of phenomenon. Mastery of a threshold concept often allows the learner to make connections that were hitherto hidden from view.

  4. A threshold concept is likely to be bounded in that ‘any conceptual space will have terminal frontiers, bordering with thresholds into new conceptual areas’ (Meyer and Land, 2006, p. 6). One important caution is to be aware that a threshold concept can be a form of disciplinary property and as such, its presentation in a curriculum may carry an inherent tendency to invite congealed understandings. This implies a curriculum design perspective that aims for a research-minded approach to mastery in which there is always space for questioning the concept itself. An essentialist reading of threshold concepts is best resisted by sustaining a sense of their provisional explanatory capacity.

  5. A threshold concept is likely to involve forms of ‘troublesome knowledge’; David Perkins defines this as ‘that which appears counter-intuitive, alien (emanating from another culture or discourse), or seemingly incoherent’ (in Meyer and Land, 2003, p.7). From this view, mastery of a threshold concept can be inhibited by the prevalence of a ‘common sense’ or intuitive understanding of it. Getting students to reverse their intuitive understandings is also troublesome because the reversal can involve an uncomfortable, emotional repositioning.

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