1177-threshold-concepts-and-transformational-learning

TRANSCENDING DISCIPLINARY BOUNDARIESIts application in my discipline-specific work was motivated by – and done inpreparation to address – the questions of how to engender reflective responses inall students at all times, or, among those students who do respond defensively, howto cultivate transition from defensiveness to reflectiveness (Schwartzman 2007,2008). Because the conceptual framework organizes exploration around studentresponse to what appears unknowable, rather than discipline content, it transcendsdisciplinary boundaries.Organization of the PaperThe paper begins with an introduction to Threshold Concepts (TC) and thresholdconcepts (tc) and proceeds in sequence: an exposition of motivation andpreparation for defining a theoretical foundation (in several parts); a comparisonof process and structure in the TC community with that of a classical scientificcommunity of practice and research, which illuminates the process of generatingcandidate theoretical foundations; a literature-based description of reflective anddefensive responses and the rupture in knowing that gives rise to them, as well asthe larger context of learning in which all three are situated; an excerpt of studentfeedback data in my course, from which the work underlying this paperoriginated; a proposal of the aggregated two response types as a disciplineindependenttheoretical foundation, both for this investigation specifically, andby extension for TC scholarship more generally; application and evaluation ofthe candidate theoretical foundation and the associated explanatory theorydefined by it; a view toward possible future work.The ConceptTHRESHOLD CONCEPTS (TC) AND threshold concepts (tc)TC: informally. The frame of Threshold Concepts (TC) is generally understoodas an orientation in teaching, for any discipline, that is concerned with howto support students’ learning particularly challenging material, aka thresholdconcepts (tc’s).tc: more formally, definitions. Meyer and Land speak of tc’s as conceptualgateways or portals to an otherwise inaccessible – and unknown – conceptual spaceor way of understanding. Such conceptual gateways [are characterized as]transformative (occasioning a significant shift in the perception of a subject),irreversible (unlikely to be forgotten, or unlearned only through considerable effort),and integrative (exposing the previously hidden interrelatedness of something).Transition through the portal to the new space often poses difficulty and isexperienced as troublesome. The new space is itself bounded (bordered by thresholdsinto further, currently inaccessible conceptual territory) (Meyer & Land, 2005,pp. 373–377).23