1177-threshold-concepts-and-transformational-learning

EDITORS’ PREFACEBuilding on these earlier findings the specific aims of the researchers thenbecame the identification of:1. How research supervisors recognise the acquisition of the threshold concepts2. Where and how they recognise evidence they are crossing, and3. How they ‘nudge’ candidates in the crossing of this threshold.By ‘nudging’ the authors are referring to ‘the constructive intervention of thesupervisor to aid the student’s conceptualised work’. This nudging takes placethrough ‘staged interventions’ during the development of the supervisory relationshipat various stages of doctoral candidature. The following were recognised asparticularly significant:– The development of research questions.– The movement from other-directed reading to self-directed and ‘owned’ readingof the literature leading to the development of a sound literary review.– Working with data at different conceptual levels, analysing, interpreting anddefining findings which make a contribution to understanding as well as factualknowledge.– Developing an argument or thesis which can be sustained and supported.– Producing the abstract and the conceptual conclusions.These interventions were found to be key moments for helping candidates make‘learning leaps’ and articulate their understanding at a conceptual level. Supervisorsalso identified specific elements in their supervision practices which seemed toassist their supervisees in the process of what the authors term ‘conceptual thresholdcrossing’. These specific practices include the following:– Encouraging engagement with the research question.– Offering and prompting opportunities for engagement with the literature inrelation to themes, issues and then in a dialogue with the candidate’s ownwork.– Oral prompting of conceptual work in groups, supervisory meetings, andindividually.– Encouraging conceptual and critical work with prompt feedback.– Pointing out contradictions and tensions.– Encouraging careful data analysis, developing themes, engaging with theories.– Encouraging early writing and much editing-sharing and reflection.– Using the language of ‘doctorateness’ e.g. conceptual framework, and the ideas,the research and theories of learning e.g. meta-cognition.– Offering opportunities to articulate ideas and achievements in mock vivas andother oral presentations.The authors contend that evidence of a candidate’s behaviour changes is oftena proxy indication that the student has crossed a particular conceptual thresholdand that this indicates a change in subjectivity, a ‘shift, a change, in the learner’sappreciation and understanding of her/himself as well as what has been learned’.Though these ontological shifts often incur challenge and a degree of troublesomenes,they generally were found to occasion new insights and access to newlevels.xxxix