Threshold Concept Theory

Abstract

Threshold concept theory holds that there are certain fields of study within which may be found one or more ideas that represent a turning point for those seeking mastery of the subject. Once one of these threshold concepts has been comprehended, one no longer views the subject, or the world, in quite the same way. Furthermore, understanding these threshold concepts is a necessary step in mastering the subject, because without them, the subject cannot fully be explored. These concepts are called "threshold concepts" because grasping them is comparable to passing through a gateway and entering a new realm.

Overview

Most people have encountered threshold concepts, but without recognizing them as such. Because of this, examples of threshold concepts are the most useful way to convey to people what these ideas are and how they exert influence. One of the most recognizable examples comes from the field of economics, which deals with how societies allocate resources that are in limited supply. When most people think about economics, their first thought is of money. Because money is something that people use everyday to exchange value, it is easy to forget its real nature, and to act as though money were an intrinsically valuable substance. As one begins to study economics, however, one soon comes to the realization that money—whether bank notes, coins, or bars of gold—actually has no intrinsic value, and is only valuable on a symbolic level, because people have agreed to believe that it is valuable. Realizing this transforms the way a person looks at economics. Instead of people trading goods and services in order to acquire a resource that has a nature that is inherently precious, one realizes that the pursuit of money is essentially the pursuit of something that has no real value. Rather, the pieces of paper or shiny rocks that constitute currency function as placeholders for real value (Mudge, 2014). Having made this realization, the student of economics will generally find it difficult to set aside; looking at an ingot of gold will never again feel quite as impressive. The arbitrary value of money is a threshold concept.

Speaking generally, threshold concepts have a number of characteristics that can be helpful in identifying them. The most prominent of these is that threshold concepts tend to be troublesome, meaning that they are often strange or difficult to recognize. A threshold concept is troublesome because it requires some special effort or change in perspective before one can unlock its meaning, since at first glance it appears to be counterintuitive. In the example above about money, it would seem counterintuitive to assert that gold is actually without inherent value, since the fact that it is widely used for decoration and jewelry making would seem to suggest that it is valuable. Nevertheless, part of the reason for the deep impact of the realization is due to the fact that it is precisely the opposite of what one would expect (Tucker et al., 2014).

Other qualities often observed in threshold concepts are irreversibility and transformativity. These terms signify that once grasped, a threshold concept transforms one's view of the world in a way that is difficult or impossible to undo, making it irreversible. Threshold concepts are also discursive and bounded, meaning that they often require one to adopt new terminology in order to describe them, and that understanding them creates boundaries around them, distinguishing them from other areas of knowledge. Finally, threshold concepts have the effect of helping one integrate seemingly disparate features of a field of knowledge, making connections between ideas that previously appeared to be separate and unrelated (Fleming, 2016).

Further Insights

Much of the context for the notion of threshold concepts has drawn upon the field of anthropology, which studies—among other things—the patterns of behavior within societies and their significance. A class of behavior that has long been fascinating for anthropologists concerns rituals and rites of passage. Rituals are a series of actions that are performed in order to symbolize a larger truth, such as welcoming the return of the sun at the winter solstice or celebrating a bountiful harvest with a feast.

Rites of passage are a specific type of ritual, and they are used to commemorate the movement of people from one stage of being to another (Basgier, 2016). This could be from youth to adulthood, from fertility to menopause, or from old age to death. The study of rites of passage in cultures that are less reliant on technology suggests to some scholars that rites of passage serve important psychological functions for the individual and the community, by marking boundaries and calling attention to those who are crossing these boundaries. It has further been suggested that the overall lack of rites of passage in the developed world may be related to some of the social ills prevalent there. In any case, it is from the concept of rites of passage that the idea of liminality emerged to describe threshold concepts.

Liminality describes both a period and a place of transition from an earlier state to a subsequent and irreversible state. If one conceives of a "before" and an "after," then liminality describes the period where one passes from one to the other. The liminal state is characterized primarily by a sense of disorientation, as one is forced to let go of old forms of understanding that functioned in the "before" state, and embrace new forms that are necessary in the "after" state (Harlow & Peter, 2014).

The notion of threshold concepts has been of special interest in the field of education, because it radically alters the manner in which one teaches a subject. Once one identifies the threshold concepts within a field, then these must assume a more prominent role in the development of curriculum and assessment resources. In a very real sense, the idea of a threshold concept is itself a threshold concept, because once an educator becomes aware of it, it is not possible to disregard it, or to teach a subject without pausing to consider what that subject's threshold concepts might be.

Rather than continuing to use a syllabus that, for whatever reasons, places the threshold concepts in the second half of the course, a teacher might feel compelled to move these to an earlier course meeting, since students would need to be exposed to the threshold concepts as soon as possible in order to develop a mature understanding of the field overall. Typically, there must be an introductory period during which the groundwork is laid, meaning that the students are given a basic understanding of the topic as a conceptual frame of reference that they may then build upon. To return to the example above regarding the study of economics, students would need to be introduced to the general ideas of supply and demand, exchanges of value, and intrinsic versus extrinsic value, before they would have the context needed to understand the significance of the threshold concept of currency as arbitrary and lacking in intrinsic value (Blair & Fitch, 2015).

Much of the early research in the area of threshold concept theory has consisted of efforts to identify threshold concepts within each field of study. This appears to be a natural response by academics upon first learning about threshold concepts. They immediately reflect upon their own fields of inquiry and try to recall what concepts they found most difficult to grasp when they were first starting out as students. This practice is often referred to as the identification of bottlenecks, that is, places where progress slows down.

One might imagine students learning about a discipline as cars speeding down a highway. Suddenly, the speeding vehicles encounter a spot where a tree has fallen onto the road, blocking all but one lane. As cars reach this point, they must slow down almost to a full stop, and take turns negotiating the narrower pathway. Once a vehicle passes by the fallen tree, all lanes are again open and the vehicle returns to its customary speed. The narrow space is known as a bottleneck because it slows down everyone until they pass it (Rowe, 2016). Threshold concepts work in much the same way, because they act like obstacles that take a longer than usual time to navigate, causing students to slow down and experience frustration and delay. Not everyone will have the same bottlenecks while studying a given subject, but threshold concept theory posits that for every discipline there are certain ideas that tend to challenge people more than others.

Issues

In the field of education, the idea of threshold concepts has had a profound impact on theories of how teachers teach and how students learn. The identification of threshold concepts at the very least has a major influence on the order in which concepts are taught; threshold concepts must be taught early enough that students can benefit from them as they encounter other ideas that are dependent upon them, but not so early that the threshold concepts' significance is lost on the students.

The effect of threshold concepts goes beyond the ordering of items on the syllabus, because it also affects the way that the subject is taught. Traditional thinking was that concepts are more or less the same to students, as if each one was like a hurdle that a runner must jump over: all of the hurdles are basically the same, so it does not really matter what order they are encountered in. One school might teach geometry before algebra and trigonometry, while another might change the order and teach algebra, geometry, and then trigonometry. The value of considering threshold concepts is that they help to make clear that there are differences in these two approaches, and one is likely to work better than the other because it provides students with earlier exposure to the threshold concepts needed for later understanding (Hoadley et al., 2015). Here, it appears that the abstract thinking needed to understand geometry is most easily understood if one has previously studied algebra, where one learns to use abstract variables to stand for unknown quantities. Threshold concept theory not only shows what order these concepts should be taught in, but also why that is the case.

Threshold concept theory has also been used to explain a puzzling fact of higher education. Academics have long struggled to build more robust partnerships across disciplinary lines, in the hope of demonstrating the artificiality of the borders that have been established between different fields and to give students new opportunities for thinking creatively. This can result in courses or entire programs built around disciplinary intersections such as business and law, biology and art, literature and music, and so on.

The problem has been twofold: first, academic power structures tend to discourage partnerships like these, as they cross budgetary lines as well as disciplinary ones. Second, and more to the point, it is not often that individuals with sufficient understanding of the complexities of more than one discipline can be found to teach and administer these partnerships. This has been both confusing and surprising since, after all, academia is full of intelligent people. It does not make sense that so few of them are well informed in a variety of fields. Threshold concept theory has been able to help explain this phenomenon. Becoming an expert in an academic discipline requires that one master that field's threshold concepts, and it turns out that this is difficult to do without concentrated study (Hosier, 2017). No matter how smart a person is, casual familiarity with a field will not impart understanding of threshold concepts.

A basic misunderstanding about threshold concepts is the belief that all students find them desirable. One might think that it is in the nature of a student to desire knowledge, and since threshold concepts are especially important pieces of knowledge (because they make it possible to open oneself to still other ideas), students would be excited to explore them. In reality, there are many situations in which this is not the case, and students actively avoid threshold concepts, rejecting them as alien or nonsensical, or resisting them for long periods before finally capitulating.

An example of such a conflict can be seen in a hypothetical case of a person who is a lifelong tobacco smoker, and who also studies medicine, specifically the effects of smoking on public health. This researcher might labor for many years, avoiding the act of acknowledging tobacco's negative effects on health, and looking for alternative causes to explain the many illnesses categorized as smoking-related. This resistance is due to the fact that, once the researcher internalizes the threshold concept, the researcher's life and outlook will be forever changed, because continuing to deny the deleterious effects of tobacco will no longer be an option (Harlow et al., 2017). For many people, resistance to change is their instinctive response, so when they encounter threshold concepts, they may be averse to understanding or even considering them.

Terms & Concepts

Bottlenecks: A metaphor used to describe the way that threshold concepts tend to be more difficult for students to master, causing them to slow down in their academic progress while they attempt to navigate the new theoretical terrain.

Eureka Effect: The experience of having a sudden revelation in which one comes to understand a concept that has proven difficult. It refers to the story of the Greek scholar Archimedes, who is said to have uttered "Eureka" upon realizing the mechanics of water displacement while soaking in a bathtub.

Interdisciplinary: Cooperation among two or more academic disciplines.

Liminality: A state of being in transition between two different understandings of the world, often characterized by profound disequilibrium.

Pre-liminal Listening: A practice in which instructors attune themselves to the learning styles of students in order to better help them negotiate the transition through threshold concepts.

Rite of Passage: A ceremony to symbolically recognize a person's passage from one stage of life to another.

Bibliography

Basgier, C. (2016). Engaging the skeptics: Threshold concepts, metadisciplinary writing, an the aspirations of general education. WAC Journal, 27, 17–35. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=120779800&site=ehost-live

Blair, L., & Fitch, S. (2015). Threshold concepts in art education: Negotiating the ambiguity in pre-service teacher identity formation. International Journal of Education through Art, 11(1), 91–102. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=102360918&site=ehost-live

Fleming, D. J. (2016). The threshold of conscience: A radical challenge for education in theological ethics … and beyond. Journal of Adult Theological Education, 13(2), 103–115. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=119109007&site=ehost-live

Harlow, A., Cowie, B., McKie, D., & Peter, M. (2017). Threshold concept theory as an enabling constraint: A facilitated practitioner action research study. Educational Action Research, 25(3), 438–452. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=123287704&site=ehost-live

Harlow, A., & Peter, M. (2014). Mastering threshold concepts in tertiary education: "I know exactly what you are saying and I can understand it but I've got nowhere to hook it." Waikato Journal of Education, 19(2), 7–23. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=108357211&site=ehost-live

Hoadley, S., Tickle, L., Wood, L. N., & Kyng, T. (2015). Threshold concepts in finance: conceptualizing the curriculum. International Journal of Mathematical Education in Science & Technology, 46(6), 824–840. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=103364638&site=ehost-live

Hosier, A. (2017). Creating learning outcomes from threshold concepts for information literacy instruction. College & Undergraduate Libraries, 24(1), 1–13. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=121774593&site=ehost-live

Mudge, P. (2014). 'Crossing frontiers without a map'—the role of threshold concepts and problematic knowledge in religious education and spirituality. Waikato Journal of Education, 19(2), 51–67. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=108357214&site=ehost-live

Rowe, N. (2016). Threshold concept theory and nonformal education: Community-based arts learning in Palestine. Educational Research for Social Change, 5(1), 94–106.

Tucker, V. M., Weedman, J., Bruce, C. S., & Edwards, S. L. (2014). Learning portals: Analyzing threshold concept theory for LIS education. Journal of Education for Library and Information Science, 55(2), 150–165. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=95121307&site=ehost-live

Suggested Reading

Nahavandi, A. (2016). Threshold concepts and culture-as-meta-context. Journal of Management Education, 40(6), 794–816. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=119069872&site=ehost-live

Neve, H., Wearn, A., & Collett, T. (2016). What are threshold concepts and how can they inform medical education? Medical Teacher, 38(8), 850–853. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=117747051&site=ehost-live

Rifenburg, J. M. (2016). Student-athletes, prior knowledge, and threshold concepts. Teaching English in the Two Year College, 44(1), 32–48. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=119045779&site=ehost-live

Rodger, S., Turpin, M., & O'Brien, M. (2015). Experiences of academic staff in using threshold concepts within a reformed curriculum. Studies in Higher Education, 40(4), 545–560.

Savin-Baden, M. (2016). The impact of transdisciplinary threshold concepts on student engagement in problem- based learning: A conceptual synthesis. Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-Based Learning, 10(2), 184–204. Retrieved January 1, 2018 from EBSCO Online Database Education Source. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=eue&AN=118839095&site=ehost-live