A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

14 ❘
Teaching, supervising, learning
are those key ideas, concepts or processes in a discipline that need to be understood by
students before they can understand other parts of the subject that follow from them.
(Approaches to learning might be such a threshold concept in learning and teaching in
higher education.) Not every key concept in a discipline is a threshold concept. The
language Meyer and Land have developed thus talks of ‘troublesome knowledge’ that
represents a ‘portal’ or ‘gateway’, which once the learner has passed through it will
illuminate and underpin much subsequent understanding. Students can get ‘stuck’ in a
state of ‘liminality’, not being able to get through the portal. The idea of threshold concepts
is useful, as it helps teachers to identify very important areas that it is vital to help students
understand; it can also help to identify past misunderstandings that may prevent the
learner from making current progress. For example, diagnostic tests may commonly be
given to students entering higher education to ascertain if there are areas they need to
improve before embarking on degree work. These might focus on selected threshold
concepts.
ADULT LEARNING THEORY
It is questionable how far there really are theories of adult learning and whether adult
learning differs in character from that of children. Despite these doubts there are
propositions concerning the learning of adults which have had much influence on higher
education, if only to cause teachers in this sector to re-examine their premises and adjust
some of their views. Adult learning theories are thought by some to be particularly
relevant to an ever more diverse student body (whether considered by age, mode of study,
or ethnic, economic or educational background) and to postgraduate work.
Malcolm Knowles is associated with using the term andragogy (despite its much earlier
aetiology) to refer to adult learning and defining it as the ‘art and science of helping adults
learn’ (Knowles and Associates, 1984). A complication is that he has changed his
definition over decades of work. Andragogy is considered to have five principles:
• As a person matures he or she becomes more self-directed.
• Adults have accumulated experiences that can be a rich resource for learning.
• Adults become ready to learn when they experience a need to know something.
• Adults tend to be less subject-centred than children; they are increasingly problemcentred.
• For adults the most potent motivators are internal.
There is a lack of empirical evidence to support this differentiation from childhood
learning. Despite many critiques of andragogy (e.g. see Davenport, 1993) it has had
considerable influence because many university lecturers recognise characteristics they
have seen their learners exhibiting. Many ‘types’ of learning that are often used and
discussed in higher education, including experiential learning, student autonomy and
self-directed learning, belong in or derive from the tradition of adult education.