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On the Threshold with Students
Abstract
The idea of threshold concepts emerged from and has evolved through communities of scholarly teachers and researchers talking with each other about disciplinary learning. In this chapter, I will approach thresholds from a different angle. Drawing on threshold concept seminars that I conducted with undergraduate students at three US colleges, this chapter considers what we might understand about threshold concepts if we partnered with students to explore the nature of thresholds and learning in higher education.
... Liminale Räume können an verschiedenen Stellen in Lernprozessen auftreten. Ihr Durchschreiten wird in der Literatur als hoch emotionaler Prozess beschrieben [8,9] Um die Bedeutung negativer Emotionen in der Entrepreneurship Education zu verdeutlichen, greifen wir auf das Konzept der "liminal spaces" zurück [9]. Die Begriffe "Liminalität" oder "Liminaler Raum" (von lateinisch limen = Schwelle) beschreiben Schwellenzustände, in denen Verschiebungen in der Wahrnehmung von Dingen und die Integration neuer Denk-und Handelsweisen stattfinden [9]. ...
... Während liminale Räume von den Lernenden zumeist als unbequem oder "lästig" empfunden werden, ermöglichen sie gleichzeitig "neue und bisher unzugängliche Denk-und Handlungsweisen" [11, S. 200]. Das Gelernte ist dabei in der Regel irreversibel; es ist unwahrscheinlich, dass es wieder vergessen wird -oder es kann nur durch erheblichen Aufwand wieder verlernt werden [8]. Zudem scheint die Durchquerung liminaler Räume nicht nur zur Aneignung von Wissen oder Kompetenzen zu führen, sondern kann darüber hinaus Lernende auch dazu veranlassen, ihre Selbst-und Weltwahrnehmung zu reflektieren und zu verändern [12,13]. ...
... B. nach Abschluss der "Tue-etwas-Ungewöhnliches"-Aufgabe, -aber auch Frustration, wenn Leistungen nicht wie erwartet erreicht werden konnten -beispielsweise, wenn "Investor*innen" Kritik an den vorgestellten Geschäftsideen äußerten. [8,11]. Aus demselben Grund sind sie oft nicht bereit, sich Unsicherheiten auszusetzen, in liminale Räume einzudringen und diese anschließend zu durchschreiten. ...
Emotionen sind in sämtlichen Bildungs-, Erziehungs-und Sozialisationsprozessen allgegenwärtig und auch für die Entrepreneurship Education relevant. Basierend auf einem Fallbeispiel zweier universitärer Lehrveranstaltungen stellen wir in diesem Kapitel dar, welche Arten von Emotionen in der Entrepreneurship Education an Hochschulen aufkommen können und in welchen Kontexten sie hervorgerufen werden. Das Konzept der liminalen Räume, die als Übergänge zu neuem Verstehen, neuem Handeln und neuem Denken definiert werden und an verschiedenen Stellen in Lernprozessen auftreten können, kann das Verständnis der Rolle von Emotionen in der Entrepreneurship Education fördern. Lehrende können Studierende maßgeblich unterstützen, indem sie ihnen die Möglichkeit bieten, emotionale Prozesse zu reflektieren und Unsicherheiten und Ängste zu äußern. Um sie dabei zu unterstützen, unternehmerische Fähigkeiten nicht nur theoretisch zu erwerben, sondern auch praktisch anzuwenden, müssen Universitäten in Zukunft mehr Lehr-und Lernaktivitäten in ihren Curricula verankern, in denen Studierende gefordert sind, Risiken einzugehen, querzudenken und sich nonkonformistisch zu verhalten.
... Building on Perkins' description of troublesome knowledge, Meyer and Land (2005) argued that "threshold concepts lead not only to transformed thought but to a transfiguration of identity and adoption of an extended discourse" (375). As a result of participating in a ritual, the participants acquire new knowledge and subsequently, a new status and identity within the community of practice (Felten, 2016). ...
... For example, a person coming into a new community may not pick up the nuances of different concepts that are 'common sense' to the experienced members. (Baillie et al., 2012:243) Questions of 'troublesome affect' seem to be a particularly important area for further investigation for scholars of threshold concepts (Felten, 2016). Identifying troublesome knowledge, especially, while being in the liminal state, is important, as it aids our understanding and identifies the conceptual transformations, which learners find difficult, thus making them 'stuck' (Meyer & Land, 2005:377). ...
... In the scope of the present research,questions on these troublesome experiences seem to escape many researchers even though such findings may aid our understanding and identify the needed conceptual transformations, which learners find difficult, thus making them 'stuck' (Meyer & Land, 2005:377). As these new teaching scholars embark their journey in the academic world, they will become an active participant of a ritualthe academic rituals -and acquire new knowledge and subsequently a new status and identity within the community of practice (Felten, 2016). However, taking part in a ritual can be "problematic, troublesome, and frequently involves the humbling of the participants" (Meyer & Land, 2005:376). ...
Teaching is an important component in Higher Education Institutions (HEI). To ensure the quality of education in HEI, it is vital to understand the skills and duties that need to be performed by new teaching scholars. Recently, the Ministry of Higher Education has launched the Orange Book that outlines a new and proactive career track for lecturers, with the intention to develop human capital and enhance professionalism in teaching at HEI. However, there is still not much being done in identifying the challenges faced by newly appointed lecturers in Malaysia HEI. Utilising semi-structured in-depth interviews, two new teaching scholars and two expert lecturers at one of Malaysia HEI were interviewed to determine the challenges faced by new teaching scholars. Transcribed interview sessions were analysed using thematic analysis. The results show that the new teaching scholars face challenges in developing their substance knowledge, managing the Gen-Y, and having little knowledge on teaching approaches and methodologies. The paper put forward some suitable and effective suggestions in assisting these newly appointed lecturers to improve the quality of teaching and learning (T&L) process in Malaysia HEI.
... Troublesome knowledge and TC have a cognitive and affective component (Meyer and Land, 2006a) and the acquisition of TC can be considered a highly emotive experience for students (Felten, 2016, Rattray, 2016. This affective component that plays a role in the mastery of TC has gained research interest over the years (Land et al., 2014a, Rattray, 2016, Cousin, 2006. ...
... Compared to transition to HE and transformation (5.6 and 5.7), troublesome experiences operates on a more meta level, because it is always combined with or a reaction to another experience. In addition to the already existing concepts of troublesome knowledge (Perkins, 1999), troublesome language (Meyer and Land, 2006a), and troublesome affect (Felten, 2016), I introduced the notion of troublesome experiences in chapter 3 and defined it as "a cognitive, affective and/or skills experience that obstructs students from further development", because the struggles CS students experience go beyond the knowledge being troublesome. Troublesome experiences relate to knowledge and skills that the student, to some extent, already possesses in the form of ritual, inert or tacit knowledge, but which they have trouble retrieving or applying to the existing knowledge (Shinners-Kennedy, 2016). ...
Globally, student retention is a concern in computer science (CS) study programmes. Using a qualitative longitudinal case study, this research explores how psychological capital (PsyCap) and its factors: self-efficacy, optimism, hope and resilience influence first-year computer science students’ experiences and retention from a threshold concepts (TC) perspective.
The longitudinal case study contained three rounds of semi-structured interviews that were conducted with a group of 16 first-year computer science students from a Dutch university of applied sciences. The aim was to gain insights into their PsyCap and experiences in relation to student retention. In each interview round a different graphic elicitation method was applied, both as an interview stimulus and as an additional data source. Meyer and Land’s TC (2006c) provided an overarching framework to enable comparisons between the participants’ PsyCap and their experiences.
The findings report on what I refer to as troublesome experiences of participants, which are a combination of troublesome knowledge (Perkins, 1999), skills and emotions, that relate mainly to students’ academic integration. In navigating liminality across TC, the identified participant groups: leavers, persisters and stayers reached different levels of success in crossing thresholds, leading to differences in their transformation towards becoming a CS student and potentially a (future) computer scientist. Findings reveal that the affective elements of the troublesome experiences influenced the participants’ psychological capital and vice versa. The interplay between individual factors, self-efficacy, hope and resilience appeared important in the participants’ retention, with hope being the main driver. The findings led to the development of an explanatory model for transition to higher education from a TC perspective.
This research showed that many personal and academic variables influence participants’ troublesome experiences and these experiences influence their efforts to navigate liminality. Fostering the development of self-efficacy, hope and resilience in students could improve their transformation into successful computer science students.
... An equivalent to the communitas described in traditional rituals are peers in an education programme that provides social support and a point of comparison to help shape a student's self-understanding (Ibarra & Obodaru, 2016). Felten (2016) pointed further to the importance of developing confidence from a sense of belonging in threshold crossing. In this respect, the entrepreneurial student team can function as a 'home' for the student's transformation process. ...
The paper explores entrepreneurship students' transformational learning processes through the concept of liminality.
... The troublesome nature of TCs potentially makes their mastery particularly effortful as learners grapple with the new and often counterintuitive knowledge to be learned. This troublesomeness coupled with the transformative nature of TCs results in a learning experience that is both powerful and highly emotive (Cousin, 2008;Felten, 2016;Rattray, 2016;Timmermans & Meyer, 2020). It is easy to think of the emotional or affective side of threshold mastery as relating to the effort it takes to master the concept and to cope with the experience of being in a liminal state. ...
Higher education is facing increasing calls to engage in a process of intellectual decolonisation. This process necessitates that we take time to consider both the content of our curriculum and the pedagogic practices used to facilitate its understanding. Drawing on discussions of both intellectual decolonisation and its underpinning principles of epistemic justice, I consider the implications of these ideas for the threshold concept framework. These implications are likely to relate to both the identification of potential future threshold concepts and the experience of engaging with them. As threshold scholars, we may need to reconsider our ideas about who the experts are within a discipline or practice in our efforts to identify candidate threshold concepts and consider alternative sources of evidence in support of this. In addition, we need to reflect on how the learning experiences that arise as a result of encounters with thresholds that have emerged as a result of the privileging of knowledge and ways of knowing from the ‘global north’ might serve as a source of epistemic trouble to learners from the ‘global south’. Such learning experiences are likely to be highly emotive and represent a significant source of troublesome learning.
... As implicated by Gautam, the kind of compassionate listener he found in nature is immensely restorative for people in pain; and therefore, it is a sage thing for educational systems and practices to emulate this quality, for (adolescent) learners with similar life events may take considerable amount of time to resolve their psychological issues, as in Gautam's case, and may be needing delicate niching also in society, including educational systems and practices and teacher-student conversations. And, this realization is perfectly in line with Felten's (2016) critical observation that undergraduate students' voices concerning threshold experiences have largely been absent in academic conversations (p. 3). ...
This paper inquires into a two-fold issue: (i) blurred personal and academic spaces during the pandemic and their impact, and (ii) nature’s role in them. As a transformative arts-based research (TABR) within an experimental framework deploying concepts of liminality, Derrida’s ‘teleiopoiesis’, and an adapted outlook of experiential interconnectedness or consciousness of Advaita Vedanta, the paper forwards pedagogically useful findings and implications as these: (i) blurred spaces as bizarre or third space entities that were both stressful and productive, (ii) increased exposures to nature and eco-spirituality, followed by heightened realizations of nature’s place in life, learning and being during the pandemic, (iii) heterotopic university as a space or place that effectuated a surge in self-internalization of learning via intense involvement, (iv) compassionate/ empathic living as a door to self-improvement and joy, (v) formations of new habits and routines as coping strategies in the difficult times, and (v) newly formed wholesome habits and synchronous gravities in nature as great contributors to increased reflective or creative productivity during the pandemic. Additionally, yet more importantly, it highlights the instrumentality of human senses as lower rungs in realizing the interconnectedness or consciousness that experiential Advaita proffers, and this it does by communicating the need for individually unique, radically nonlinear, and adventurously inter-/ trans-disciplinary celebrations of the phenomenon. Besides, it celebrates interrelated questions and curiosities throughout.
... Mapping graduate attributes, learning outcomes, threshold concepts and design principles 6.3.3. Planning for Threshold confidence Felton (2016) states when learning a threshold concept the aim is to come to a point of feeling so comfortable in this new knowledge that a 'threshold confidence' is reached. ...
Technology is ranked as one of the most important factors influencing education in Australia, with a growing demand for digital innovation to elevate the learning experience. Online opportunities for clinical education have also recently expanded, as evidenced by 80 new health portfolio subjects developed at Torrens University of Australia (TUA) during the years 2018 – 2021, with clinical reasoning being a key skill for learners in Health sciences and Nursing courses to cultivate. While there are documented reasons why problem-based learning (PBL) and team-based learning (TBL) are both used in clinical education, research has often focused on assessment scores and learner perceptions when comparing Face-to-Face (F2F) traditional lecture style with a group learning experience. This thesis explores the potential for combining elements of traditional PBL and TBL (hybrid approach) to enhance development of independent and group clinical reasoning skills for undergraduate learners within an online environment.
A longitudinal research approach encompassed multiple design-based research (DBR) phases using qualitative reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) method for data interpretation. An initial scoping review and pilot cycle resulted in a set of four draft design principles used to inform testing, refining and retesting an online decision wheel tool artefact and hybrid PBL approach in the situated context of Torrens University. Bounded rationality theory was used as an analytical guide to reflect on enhancing decision-making holistically. In total (excluding focus group numbers), participants included 34 learners, 26 teachers , 5 digital designers and 1 central researcher involved in developing, delivering and reviewing levels of undergraduate health science and nursing subjects across Face-to-Face (F2F), Blended Learning (BL) and Fully Online Learning (FOL) platforms. Data generated before and during the impact of COVID-19 consisted of 44 interviews, 20 focus groups, 10 participant reflective journal entries (4 learners and 6 teachers), 65 researcher reflective journal entries and 40 learner decision wheel attempts over five DBR action cycles (12-week Trimesters).
This study makes an original contribution to both practice and theory by offering a set of six innovative final design principles to assist enhancing clinical reasoning development for a situated context. Although there is a fast-paced universal move towards digital innovation in higher education, identification and response to contextualised learning needs for stakeholders is important for quality experience. From this research a new PBL-informed model, named BE-HIVE, was conceptualised to operationalise specific final design principles inclusive of having a central teacher guide, adequate coaching support, simple learning designs, time for reflexive practice, and enhancing the ability for a diversity of key stakeholders to collaborate and be partners in curriculum. Additionally, this project has generated new understanding into the potential expansion of bounded rationality theory, along with how to adopt a methodologically cohesive and solely qualitative approach for design-based research.
... angemessenes Umgehen mit wissenschaftlichen Begriffen. Während die Notwendigkeit einer Reflexion wissenschaftlichen Wissens auf die eigenen Selbst-, Sozial-und Weltverhältnisse eine der Bildungstheorie immanente Forderung darstellt, ließe sich eine über den TCF informierte Wissenschaftsdidaktik daraufhin befragen, wie diese Reflexion erfolgt und wie die mit den Schwellen verbundenen affektiven und emotionalen Krisen und Erschütterungen in das Lehrgeschehen mit eingebunden werden können (Felten, 2016;Rattray, 2016). ...
In der Wissenschaft sind Erkenntnisziele, aber auch ein spezieller Weltaufschluss angelegt. Diesen zu vermitteln, ist Aufgabe der Wissenschaftsdidaktik. Was aber bedeutet es, Wissenschaft institutionell zu einem Gegenstand des Lehrens und Lernens zu machen? Die Beitragenden des Bandes liefern eine disziplinenübergreifende Einführung in die Wissenschaftsdidaktik, die sich mit grundlegenden konzeptionellen Fragen sowie Einordnungs- und Deutungsversuchen aus verschiedenen Perspektiven befasst. Hochschullehrende sowie praktisch und forschend tätige Personen in der Bildungswissenschaft finden hier leichten Zugang zur Wissenschaftsdidaktik und ihren innovativen Erkenntnispotenzialen.
... Contrarily, a student without interest in public administration may not pay attention and thus will not understand the course irrespective of the teacher's qualification or experience. Felten (2016) also observed that most students were unable to understand the course content not because of the confidence or non-confidence of lecturers but as a result of the 'threshold concept'. Osaikhiuwu (2014) revealed that institutional variables such as poorly equipped libraries did not significantly impact students' performance. ...
Capacity deficit in public administration has been decried as one of the major challenges depressing growth and development in Africa. One of the strategic pathways for improving this capacity is the effective delivery of public administration in African university systems. Within this strategic framework is the need to ensure that students enrolled in public administration courses comprehend and perform maximally in these courses, regardless of their perceived difficulty levels, using a delivery method that is predisposing to effective learning. This is the problem that this study sought to solve within the Ghanaian undergraduate public administration curriculum. This study was conducted in two phases; the survey and the experimental phases. The survey phase ranked concepts in public administration perceived as difficult by Ghanaian students studying public administration, while the experimental phase examined the efficacy of the Culturo-Techno-Contextual Approach (CTCA) in aiding students to understand two of the perceived difficult concepts: politics and bureaucracy. The survey had 566 participants from three public universities and sought to (a) rank concepts perceived as difficult in the study of public administration in Ghanaian universities; (b) undertake an in-depth probe into the relationship among thirty-seven demographics and contextual variables and difficulties in the study of public administration; (c) rank the reasons for difficulties in the study of public administration. A total of 133 second-year diploma students studying public administration participated in the experimental phase of the study. The control group had 44 students, while 89 students comprised the experimental group. Politics was the concept first treated. The experimental group was taught using CTCA, while the control group used the traditional lecture method. The concept was taught in four lessons over two weeks. Bureaucracy was also taught to both groups using CTCA and traditional lecture methods within the same time frame as politics. The politics and bureaucracy achievement test (PABAT), which had 15 items on politics and 15 on bureaucracy was used to collect data. Since random assignment to experimental and control groups could not be achieved, the analysis of the covariance procedure was applied to the data with pre-test scores inserted as a covariate. The results showed that the experimental group (Mean=22.20 and SD=5.10) significantly outperformed the control (Mean=20.45 and SD=8.01) in politics and bureaucracy (p=.000). [F (1, 130) = 14.07; p=000]. The findings showed the potential of CTCA in improving undergraduatestudents’ performance in selected difficult concepts in public administration. Within the limitations of the study, especially the small sample size and experimental duration, the study recommends (a) exploratory use of CTCA for teaching public administration in undergraduate classes in the Ghanaian university system; (b) further probe of the variables which mediate the potency of CTCA; (c) further testing on larger samples of students in Ghana and other African countries. (d) adoption of the Awaah indigenous model for breaking learning difficulties in the study of public administration.
... Drawing upon inspiration from Shkolvsky's ideas of strange-making, or de-familiarization, through to Barnett's pedagogy of strangeness and uncertainty, the MT approach intends to enhance the counter-intuitive and make exercises more troublesome [6,9]. However, it is of the utmost importance to us to build a teaching and learning environment that balances risk with trust, confidence and belonging [10,11,12]. We further suggest the notion of 'provocative competence' as one possible way to orchestrate and unify these ideas [13]. ...
To prepare our students for an unfamiliar future and unknown challenges, it is important that they are experienced in methods and strategies that equip them to manoeuvre in, and find solutions to, complex and unpredictable situations. However, there seems to be a tendency that many students incline towards ‘safe’ and well-proven paths of professional training and instrumental learning and are reluctant to explore fields of uncertainty. The ‘Making is Thinking’ initiative aligns theoretical insights and development with methodologies of implementation that prepare students to pass through the barriers to their own learning. All activities revolve around hands-on experience, developed in actions where architecture cross-pollinates with other creative disciplines. We strive to achieve real impact by actively contributing to urban development by making live interventions, with actual stakeholders and engaging with the public. In this learning environment mistakes are acknowledged as a necessary and productive condition for the creative processes. A precondition for this is to establish trust. In sum, our approaches and methodologies aim to challenge preconceptions of calculated patterns, causality and linearity in the learning process. Instead, learners are offered the affordances of uncertainty and liminality as a fertile learning space to be embraced rather than be feared. The purpose is to create and identify productive moments, and to develop a provocative competence, through moving from fixed to open ontologies. To facilitate this, we apply the methodology of ‘strange-making’, through working with a theatre company. The article concludes with reflections on the pedagogical value of liminal spaces as fertile condition for creativity.
... Methodologically, students and teachers have been interviewed about the outcome of learning after it has taken place. However, recently, researchers of the threshold concept framework have moved beyond solely identifying threshold concepts and have shown an interest in threshold concepts as learning processes and transformative journeys (Felten, 2016;Walker, 2013). This approach, which takes us into the classroom, is particularly suitable for a 'messy' learning goal such as IHL. ...
The aim of this article is to explore the processes of learning when students are engaged in intercultural historical learning (IHL), specifically how spaces of learning were, or were not, opened by students’ struggle to construct meaning. Since IHL is complex, involving both intrinsic disciplinary and extrinsic curricular goals, it is vital to understand this process in detail. The research questions address which aspects seem to activate intercultural learning, and which ones hinder or complicate it. The methodological approach employed was an instrumental, multisite case study where three teaching–learning sequences from two secondary classrooms were investigated. Here, the concepts of ‘decentring’ and ‘perspective recognition’, as aspects of IHL, were seen as threshold concepts. The threshold concepts framework – and specifically the idea of ‘liminal space’, a ‘place of potential learning’, the in-between moments in the learning process where students find themselves before ‘getting it’ – was applied as an analytical tool to uncover and describe specific moments in the selected teaching–learning sequences. Several liminal spaces were unpacked, and it transpired that ‘troublesomeness’ is an integral, potentially productive component when students navigate liminal space as a place for intercultural learning. ‘Barriers’ that obstructed learning, as well as possible ‘entry points’ where a student steps into a productive liminal space, were identified, as well as some major enabling breakthrough moments – ‘junctures’ – for IHL.
... In addition, when researchers have worked to identify threshold concepts within disciplines, they have used a wide range of methodologies and frequently focused on particular aspects of the framework rather than the framework in its entirety (Barradell, 2013;Quinlan et al., 2013). Researchers have given prominence to a consideration of the troublesome, irreversible and transformative characteristics of the framework, with a multitude of papers exploring these characteristics, but we know considerably less about the integrative and bounded nature of threshold concepts and even less about the liminal space (Land et al., 2014;Felten, 2016;Rattray, 2016). This, it is argued, is partly due to the imprecise and flexible framing of the original ideas (Irvine and Carmichael, 2009). ...
Within the Threshold Concepts Framework, ‘postliminal variation’ has been defined as the variation in the point and state of exit into a new conceptual space, and the epistemological and ontological terrain encountered from that point onwards. However, in the extensive published literature on threshold concepts, we find many cases in which its practical application has been utilised in a reductionist way, ignoring or omitting said variation, and treating mastery of threshold concepts as if they had a predetermined process, being the same, or very similar, for all students. In this paper, we aim to highlight the danger of ignoring the variation in the threshold concept framework and emphasise the potential usefulness of unexpected transformations as part of a knowledge creation process. In addition, we raise the question of our awareness of what ways of thinking, practising and being we are privileging in our identification and reinforcement of disciplinary threshold concepts and transformations. As a consequence of these discussions, we hope to remind the reader of the original assertion that threshold concepts are always epistemologically informed and are not universal or static entities, but rather they are provisional, contestable, and situated.
... Reframing TCs as an approach to reflection may mean empowering students to identify TCs themselves. Although Felton acknowledged the need for a "partnering" with students when it comes to TC identification over four years ago, 87 TC research within health professions education has only infrequently shifted focus to students. 10,88 Khatri et al. 's recent study of TCs in psychiatry involved both educator interviews and student surveys to triangulate data on what constitutes a TC. 26 Although Khatri et al. recognize that students may identify different thereshold concepts, they still suggest the three TCs they identify are transferrable to other contexts. ...
Issue
Threshold Concepts are increasingly used and researched within health professions education. First proposed by Meyer and Land in 2003, they can be defined as ways of knowing central to the mastery of a subject. They are framed as profoundly transformative, impacting the identity of those who encounter them through irreversible shifts in an individual’s outlook. Although Threshold Concepts have been identified in a multitude of educational settings across the continuum of health professions education, there has been little critique of Threshold Concepts as a theory of health professions education. Within adjacent fields critical discourse is also underdeveloped, perhaps given the educational resonance of the theory, or the way in which the theory encourages subject specialists to discuss their area of interest in depth. This commentary critically examines how Threshold Concepts have been used and researched within health professions education, applying critiques from other educational fields, to assist scholars in thinking critically regarding their application.
Evidence
Three significant critiques are outlined: 1) ‘The floating signifier problem’; 2) ‘The body of knowledge problem’; and 3) ‘The professional identity problem.’ Critique 1, the floating signifier problem, outlines how Threshold Concept theory lacks articulation and has been inconsistently operationalized. Critique 2, the body of knowledge problem, outlines the issues associated with attempting to identify a singular body of knowledge, particularly in regard to the reinforcement of entrenched power dynamics. Critique 3, the professional identity problem, argues that the way in which Threshold Concepts conceptualize identity formation is problematic, inadequately grounded in wider academic debate, and at odds with increasingly constructionist conceptualizations of identity within health professions education.
Implications
These critiques have implications for both educators and researchers. Educators using Threshold Concepts theory must think carefully about the tacit messages their use communicates, consider how the use of Threshold Concepts could reinforce entrenched power dynamics, and reflect on how their use may make material less accessible to some learners. Further, given that Threshold Concept theory lacks articulation, using the theory to structure curricula or educational sessions is problematic. Threshold Concepts are not synonymous with course learning outcomes and so, While considering Threshold Concepts may enable pedagogical discussion, the theory cannot help educators decide which concepts it applies to; this requires careful planning which extends beyond the bounds of this theory. For researchers, there are issues too with power and inconsistent theoretical operationalization, but also with the way in which Threshold Concepts theory conceptualizes identity formation, which cast doubt on its use as a theory of identity development. On balance, we believe Threshold Concept theory suffers a number of fundamental flaws that necessitate a shift from the positioning of Threshold Concepts as a theory, toward the use of Threshold Concepts as a less prescriptive reflective prompt to stimulate pedagogical discussion.
... Most scholarly articles, both in the United States and the United Kingdom, are written from the perspective of the academic advisor or personal tutor. As Felten (2016) pointed out when he examined the literature on threshold concepts, students are often investigated as the objects of study rather than as partners in enquiry. ...
There is a recognised lack of international literature on advising and tutoring in Higher Education (HE). In an international context, advising and tutoring is of great importance and, in that regard, global research helps to build a credible evidence base for our practice and to acknowledge the centrality of high quality advising and tutoring to teaching, learning and student success. The aim of this collection of articles is to address the need to further stimulate discussion in this field whilst considering some of the most pressing gaps in the current literature, promoting further international research in this area and connecting several disparate HE policymaking agendas, especially in the wake of Covid19. The collection highlights the impact of high-quality advising and tutoring practices and is intent on advancing evidence that advising and tutoring are fundamental to helping universities achieve their strategic ambitions for student success.
... Identifying troublesome knowledge, especially, while being in the liminal state, is important, as it aids our understanding and identifies the conceptual transformations, which learners find difficult, thus, making them 'stuck' (Meyer & Land, 2005, p.377). Questions of 'troublesome affect' seem to be a particularly important area for further investigation for scholars of threshold concepts (Felten, 2016) as it also leads to the identification of the threshold concepts (Rodger & Turpin, 2011, p.270). A few researchers already have begun to open this door. ...
Drawing from Meyer and Land (2005) work on Threshold Concepts, this paper describes the role of liminal period in enabling the transition one must partake to become a military officer. To date, not much attention has been given on the process of transformation and challenges faced by cadets in becoming an officer. With focus given on the initiation phase, the study argues that such period is crucial and troublesome as cadet would have to abandon their self-identity to acquire the officers’ mantle. Through in-depth interviews conducted at two prominent European military institutions with policy makers, military trainers, officers and cadets, the paper illustrates how the initiation phase is an important rites-to-passage that will eliminate those deemed unfit to become an officer while embedding the required distinctiveness of being a military officer. The paper further argues that even though the military education system is highly mechanised, some of the process of imbedding the officers’ identity happens through informal exchanges with superiors, peers and subordinates. Establishing the importance of the phase, findings included in this paper may contribute in understanding why some cadets traverse successfully through the elimination process, while others get themselves stuck on the rites of passage1 to become an officer.
... Most scholarly articles, both in the United States and the United Kingdom, are written from the perspective of the academic advisor or personal tutor. As Felten (2016) pointed out when he examined the literature on threshold concepts, students are often investigated as the objects of study rather than as partners in enquiry. ...
In this perspectives piece, we argue that technology can be used to create and facilitate “Third Space” advising, via a model of “flipped advising” which focuses on the development of quality staff–student partnerships. “Third Space” advising, using technology, encourages students and staff to work together to create and validate knowledge, connect experiences, and improve the learning culture of the organization. It also aligns with Hockings’ (2010) definition of inclusive practice in learning and teaching. While so much focus has been on the development of the advisor, the concept of Students as Partners (SaP) and “The Third Space” offer important lenses within which to shift the focus of advising practice away from the development of advisors and toward the development of staff–student partnerships, with a view to improving the impact and outcomes on students themselves.
... Meyers and Land [26,27] developed an educational theory on difficult to learn concepts as being thresholds that demarcate the familiar from the unfamiliar [22,41]. Effective instructional techniques for threshold concepts involve partnering with students as co-inquirers and co-explorers and serving as a facilitator as students become more familiar with new learning strategies and other paths to successful learning outcomes [15]. One key is to stimulate the students to be prepared for class. ...
... Meyers and Land [26,27] developed an educational theory on difficult to learn concepts as being thresholds that demarcate the familiar from the unfamiliar [22,41]. Effective instructional techniques for threshold concepts involve partnering with students as co-inquirers and co-explorers and serving as a facilitator as students become more familiar with new learning strategies and other paths to successful learning outcomes [15]. One key is to stimulate the students to be prepared for class. ...
... While students' responses to the challenges of liminality are central to their learning, the liminal traverse remains imperfectly understood. Representations of student experience are in relatively short supply within TCF scholarship (Schwartzman, 2010;Felten, 2016), and 'quite what supports or facilitates this [liminal] passage is not clear' (Rattray, 2016: 71). Emergent work has begun to consider the psychological and affective characteristics that influence how learners cope with the demands of the learning transition, but much of this is as yet exploratory or theoretical (Berg, et al., 2016;Rattray, 2016). ...
Deeper understanding of the factors that influence the course of disciplinary learning could help educators to facilitate the process more effectively. The Threshold Concepts Framework (TCF) encompasses cognitive, affective, and contextual aspects of learning, but has not fully examined the dynamics of the process. We explored students’ experiences in a TCF-aligned, cooperative learning programme in economics at a South African university. Through Interactive Qualitative Analysis, data was generated through focus groups, interviews, and written reflections. From the detailed descriptions of their learning, rendered in students’ voices, we abstract a representation of disciplinary learning as a challenging and transformative process, requiring that students engage with both head (cognition and metacognition) and heart (conation, affect, and identity). If the discipline as experienced aligns with students’ sense of self, learning is more likely to be meaningful, facilitating the engagement of their inner resources to sustain academic commitment and enhance cognitive and metacognitive development.
... Learning can be blocked if learners are experiencing difficulties in grasping a certain threshold concept.The journey towards the acquisition of a threshold concept is seen to be initiated by an encounter with a form of troublesome knowledge in the pre-liminal state. The teacher's role is to help students to cross conceptual threshold [9] Learning can be blocked if a student is experiencing difficulties in grasping a certain threshold concept [9] Crossing the threshold involves "both mastering the concept and also feeling comfortable in their new knowledge" [10]. It was noted that: "Difficulty in understanding threshold concepts may leave the learner in a state of 'liminality', a suspended state of partial understanding, or 'stuck place', in which understanding approximates to a kind of 'mimicry' or lack of authenticity. ...
... Following traditions of participatory research (Blythe, 2012;Eyman, 2009;Getto, 2014;Grabill, 2013), we are a research team formed from the instructor and self-selected students from the spring and fall sections of the class. We thus take up a tradition in composition studies of teacher-scholars writing with, rather than about, their students (Anderson et al., 1990;Clark & Wiedenhaupt, 1992;Felten, 2016;Fishman, Lunsford, McGregor, & Otuteye, 2005;Harris, 2012;Hawisher, Selfe, Moraski, & Pearson, 2004;Takayoshi, Huot, & Huot, 1999). We also take up a tradition of moving beyond member checks (as a final step in qualitative research) to position participants as co-creators of knowledge (Alsup, 2010;Koelsch, 2013;Shivers-McNair & San Diego, 2017). ...
The authors, an instructor and students, describe our practice of user-centered design on three levels: in the design and structure of an advanced undergraduate course in which we all participated, in student projects designed during the course, and in our reflections on the course presented here. We argue that principles of user-centered design can and should be more than course concepts and assignments; they can be core practices of the course that hold both students and teachers accountable for the impacts of their rhetorical choices. We offer a model for other teacher-scholars looking to involve students in the design of their courses and in writing together about their work.
... Following traditions of participatory research (Blythe, 2012;Getto, 2014;Grabill, 2013), we are a research team formed from the instructor and self-selected students from the spring and fall sections of the class. We thus take up a tradition in composition studies of teacher-scholars writing with, rather than about, their students (Anderson et al., 1990;Clark & Wiedenhaupt, 1992;Felten, 2016;Fishman, Lunsford, McGregor, & Otuteye, 2005;Harris, 2012;Hawisher, Selfe, Moraski, & Pearson, 2004;Takayoshi, Huot, & Huot, 1999). We also take up a tradition of moving beyond member checks (as a final step in qualitative research) to position participants as co-creators of knowledge (Alsup, 2010;Koelsch, 2013;Shivers-McNair & San Diego, 2017). ...
The CCCC Position Statement of Principles and Example Effective Practices for Online Writing Instruction can be viewed as a set of principles for user-centered design in online writing classrooms. However, operationalizing the principles and practices can be overwhelming. Our article identifies a set of principles that we introduce to new online writing instructors. We describe how we build a user-experience mindset into the foundation of online writing instruction using the CCCC Position Statement as well as principles from UX and user-centered design; we draw on work by key figures in UX and usability, including Goodwin (2009), Klein (2016), and Buley (2013; see also Howard & Greer, 2011). Our article describes how we introduce basic principles of user-centered design to new instructors, apply those principles to core topics in online writing instruction, and model a process of student feedback to promote an iterative design philosophy for online courses.
Purpose
This study proposes the theory of higher education learning (THEL). The theory argues that certain concepts are difficult to understand, so learners and instructors should consider common factors that will enhance learners’ understanding of key concepts that are difficult to comprehend across various fields of study. The components of this theory have been tested in three different fields (public administration, entrepreneurship and chemistry) in separate studies in Ghana, Nigeria and Burundi within a five-year span to validate their applicability to higher education learning.
Design/methodology/approach
The design covers empirical, philosophical and theoretical discussions and comparative studies of other researchers and the authors’ work and thinking.
Findings
This theory proposes five variables (gender, age, opportunity, instructor knowledge and instructor confidence) that address students’ difficulty in understanding concepts in higher education learning. These factors are premised on six assumptions: (1) gender orientation must be either male or female; (2) age must be consistent with the parameter set; (3) there must be learners’ desire to study the same subject after school; (4) there must be an institution offering further studies on the same subject; (5) the instructor might have understood the subject in his/her official training, experience or practice and (6) the instructor must demonstrate certainty, accuracy, verifiability and reliability in the transfer of knowledge to the learners. Given these assumptions, the uniqueness of this theory lies in its application of the five variables to solve challenges uniquely related to studies in higher education.
Originality/value
This theory will incite debate and provide further insights into higher education learning models. The novelty lies in the five prepositions proven to enhance effective teaching and learning in higher education. Specifically, it introduces an extension to Piaget’s cognitive constructivist theory by proposing higher age brackets for students at the university level, opportunity (for future studies) to close the gap in Ausubul’s theory of advance organizers and endogenous factors to bridge the gap in Okebukola’s culturo-techno-contextual approach.
Threshold concepts are conceived of as portals to learning that open previously inaccessible ways of thinking. They encompass specific ideas within a discipline that must be mastered before the learner can progress. The process of identifying threshold concepts can reveal hidden or unacknowledged fundamental disciplinary beliefs and epistemology. Integrating a threshold concepts framework into the scholarship of teaching and learning in art history (SoTL-AH) can help faculty diagnose and anticipate when students are likely to encounter troublesome knowledge within an art history course. Distinguishing these thresholds can aid instructors in designing courses that prepare for specific stages that present conceptual or affective difficulty and turn those into transformative experiences that promote reconstituted and integrated knowledge. Threshold concepts can also be applied more broadly to benefit curriculum design, assessment, and the profession. This paper explains threshold concepts and bottlenecks, describes the benefits of using threshold concepts, identifies potential limitations in utilizing them in the design of teaching strategies, and proposes some preliminary threshold concepts in art history.
Beyond Liminality: Ontologies of Abundant Betweenness examines the concept of liminality in the social sciences and humanities, and advocates for a more critical and restricted use of the concept while offering more precise alternatives.
Originally conceived in response to the near-universal ritualization of changes of status (i.e., “rites of passage”), liminality was a welcome and much-needed correction to the reigning static and structural models of culture at the time. However, it soon escaped its initial realm and was enthusiastically—and mostly uncritically—absorbed by many if not all scholarly disciplines. The very success of the concept suggests that there is something about it that resonates with our own cultural sentiments. However, the assumptions that underlie diagnoses of liminality are seldom noted and even more seldom analyzed and critiqued. This book
examines the history of the concept, its evolution, and its current status, and asks whether liminality accurately reflects lived realities which might better be described by fluidity, hybridity, multiplicity, constant motion and recombination, and abundant betweenness.
Beyond Liminality: Ontologies of Abundant Betweenness is
key reading for scholars and students across the social sciences and humanities interested in ritual, performance, identity formation, rights, ontology, and epistemology.
The education of future entrepreneurs shapes how we will live in the future, and proper entrepreneurship education is thus of utmost importance. Entrepreneurship educators and researchers constantly renew tools, interventions, and training programs for entrepreneurship education and adapt them to the specific needs of entrepreneurs and developments in the entrepreneurship ecosystem. This open-access book is based on this background and offers expert insights that highlight context-specificity and discuss training methods and tools that are impact-oriented. The authors represent multiple institutional and cultural backgrounds, to provide a useful resource with new ideas for the community of entrepreneurship educators, facilitators, and scholars. Based on the chapters, the editors of the volume also offer several propositions and critical insights important for the current state of entrepreneurship education and its future development. This book will be a valuable resource for entrepreneurship educators and education policymakers alike.
In view of the continuing growth and importance of entrepreneurship education within the educational landscape, there remains a significant demand for theoretical as well as practical approaches. In particular, there is a demand for approaches that shed light on the interplay between course design and individual learning. This chapter draws on the threshold concept approach, which is becoming an increasingly important perspective in educational research. Whilst the threshold concept approach has been applied usefully to develop the pedagogy of various academic disciplines, for example, economics, healthcare and information literacy, they have so far received little attention in the context of entrepreneurship education. The threshold concept approach addresses the question of how learners can practise an exploratory, reflexive approach to discipline and subject-area-specific ways of thinking and practising. The contribution of our chapter is twofold: firstly, we want to show that the threshold concept approach offers a new perspective for theory and practice in entrepreneurship education through its focus on bridging a disciplinary way of thinking and practising, on the one hand, and a subjective view of entrepreneurial phenomena, on the other hand. Secondly, in order to enrich entrepreneurial teaching and learning conceptualizations, this chapter presents a review of the candidate entrepreneurial threshold concepts which have appeared in the literature to date, in order to characterize them as a potential starting point for a promising field of research.
Der Beitrag stellt das Threshold Concept Framework (TCF) vor
und zeigt auf, wie es wissenschaftsdidaktische Fragestellungen bereichern kann. Das
TCF bietet einen Erklärungsansatz, wie sich der Zugang zu Wissenschaft und wissen-
schaftlichen Disziplinen als Aneignungsprozess von Begriffen und als Konstruktion in-
dividueller und intersubjektiver Begriffsräume verstehen lässt. Über die Identifikati-
on von Schwellenkonzepten kann der Ansatz Hochschullehrenden zudem eine wissen-
schaftlich reflektierende Auseinandersetzung mit dem eigenen Fach ermöglichen und ei-
nen fruchtbaren Austausch von Lehrenden, Hochschuldidaktiker:innen und Studieren-
den befördern. Als mögliche Anknüpfungspunkte für die Wissenschaftsdidaktik werden
insbesondere das transformative Potential von Threshold Concepts, ihre Rolle in profes-
sionellen Lehr-/Lerngemeinschaften sowie der ihnen inhärente Umgang mit unsiche-
rem Wissen und Ungewissheit(en) genauer betrachtet.
Der Beitrag beschreibt Hands-on-Entrepreneurship mit einem Fokus auf der
menschlichen Perspektive. Es werden Voraussetzungen und Umsetzungserfahrungen
aus der Vermittlung und Stärkung des Entrepreneur Spirits vorgestellt. Ein Praxisbeitrag,
der über die Skizzierung konkreter Umsetzungen und relevanter Anknüpfungspunkte
sowohl Lehrende als auch am Entrepreneurial Spirit interessierte
Studiengangsverantwortliche anspricht.
Die vorgestellte Studie erläutert Faktoren und Gründe, die Studierende zu einem
Auslandsaufenthalt motivieren oder davon abhalten. Aufbauend auf einer Gegenüberstellung
von Erfahrungen von MINT-Studierenden mit Studierenden anderer
Fächer lassen sich Strategien zur Förderung internationaler Mobilität für Ingenieurstudierende
ableiten.
Die Bildungs- und Arbeitswelten angehender Ingenieur*innen werden geprägt
durch die Auswirkungen weltweiter Trends und Entwicklungen wie Digitalisierung,
Entrepreneurship-Bewegungen und Globalisierung. In Folge führen arbeitsorganisatorische
Herausforderungen und gesellschaftliche Entwicklungen zu mehr Komplexität
auf inhaltlicher und methodischer Ebene. Die Lehre in den Ingenieurwissenschaften
hat demnach den Anspruch und die Aufgabe, angehende Ingenieur*innen
von morgen so vorzubereiten, dass sie diesen Herausforderungen erfolgreich begegnen
können. Hierzu ist es notwendig, die ingenieurwissenschaftliche Lehre kontinuierlich
zu modernisieren, neu zu denken und die Methoden, Inhalte und Lehr-Lernformate
auf die Bedarfe einer digitalisierten und globalisierten Welt anzupassen.
Im Rahmen des Bund-Länder-Programms Qualitätspakt Lehre (QPL) wurden
im Zeitraum von 2011 bis 2020 umfangreiche finanzielle Mittel zur Verbesserung
der Studienbedingungen und der Lehrqualität an deutschen Hochschulen zur Verfügung
gestellt. Ziel war es, eine qualitativ hochwertige Hochschullehre zu sichern
und weiterzuentwickeln. Ein weiterer Schwerpunkt des Programms war die (Weiter-)
Qualifizierung des Lehrpersonals sowie die Verbesserung der Betreuung und
Beratung von Studierenden. Die geförderten gesellschaftlich relevanten Themenfelder
und Maßnahmen bilden die komplexen Herausforderungen ab, die an Universitäten
und Hochschulen zu bewältigen sind. Zu diesen zählen in besonderem Maße
die Digitalisierung, der Umgang mit Heterogenität in Studium und Lehre und die
Förderung individueller Studienerfolge. Als übergreifende Zielsetzung des QPL
sollte dies durch eine Optimierung der Studieneingangsphase, die Einbindung digitaler
Konzepte und Formate sowie durch die Erhöhung von Praxisbezügen im ingenieurwissenschaftlichen
Curriculum erreicht werden.
This book arises from an article we published last year on “Writing Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Articles for Peer-Reviewed Journals” (Healey, Matthews, and Cook-Sather 2019). Our aim in the book was to demystify and to challenge the writing and publication processes that serve implicit and explicit gatekeeping functions in the academy. We see, now, at the intersection of the global pandemic and the widespread uprisings against anti-Black racism, expanded opportunities and a renewed sense of urgency to write both within and beyond “traditional” (mostly Western, mostly white) genres in ways that move us closer to creating more just and more authentic institutions and educational practices.
In the book we unpack the process of writing for publication in a wide variety of genres, including empirical research articles, conceptual pieces, case studies, reflective essays, stories, and social media. We recognize that the boundaries between these genres and others we discuss—literature reviews, opinion pieces, books and edited collections, conference and workshop presentations, and teaching award, fellowship, and promotion applications—are overlapping and provisional. This we see as a strength, not a problem, since working within and across genres may encourage new ways of engaging, analyzing, and sharing understandings that can, in turn, legitimate this wider range of ways of writing about learning and teaching.
We argue that “… writing for publication is not simply producing a text but is, rather, a complex process of joining a conversation, forging an identity, and embracing an opportunity for ongoing learning” (p.330). Moreover, we recognize that there are many communities having different conversations about learning and teaching—disciplinary and inter-disciplinary; formal and informal; context specific and reaching across contexts. The book is aimed at faculty, staff, and students new to and experienced in writing about learning and teaching. We cite a wide range of scholars, offer snippets of our own stories, and weave in reflections by seasoned and new academics, graduate students, and undergraduates from different parts of the world who share their experiences of writing about learning and teaching. The book is supported by a wide range of online resources.
We hope you will enjoy reading the text as much as we have had in writing it. For a short blog entitled ‘Making sense of writing about learning and teaching’ see: https://issotl.com/blog/
Mick Healey, Kelly Matthews and Alison Cook-Sather
Reviewer comments
“Your book is a real gift. … it’s beautifully written—with a great voice—scholarly but personal. That sense of a human presence, an engaging voice, is the piece most often and glaringly missing from academic writing. So, in addition to giving readers lots of great guidance, you’ve given them a model of what such writing looks like at its best.”
Pat Hutchings, Senior Associate, Carnegie Foundation and Senior Scholar with the National Institute for Learning Outcomes Assessment, USA
“What a very useful book this is going to prove to be, really helpful for lots of people especially since there are links to online resources and in-text activities plus reflections from lots of different people. It’s a really new way of looking at academic writing that goes well beyond simple handbooks to guide the production of texts.”
Sally Brown, Emerita Professor, Leeds Beckett University, UK
Healey, Matthews, and Cook-Sather (2019). Writing Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Articles for Peer-Reviewed Journals. Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 7(2), 28-50. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.7.2.3 Open Access.
Healey, M., Matthews, K., & Cook-Sather, A. (2020). Writing about learning and teaching in higher education: Creating and contributing to public scholarly conversations across a range of genres. Center for Engaged Learning Open-Access Books, Elon University, USA https://www.centerforengagedlearning.org/books/writing-about-learning/ Open Access.
paper available at https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007/978-981-13-6106-7_25-1
This article details an ongoing inquiry into the nature of the three-way conversation in art therapy education, regarding the relationship between art, educator and student. Drawing upon a reflection on the use of the Open Studio setting as a third space in the educative environment, we explore the impact of our role as educators when students are processing their learning experiences with art. A practice-led exploration of these questions illuminates the importance of expanding the learning interaction to incorporate experiences that include the risk associated with rupture, innovation and change. Set within the framework of an emerging conversation between two colleagues, this paper is offered as a contribution to the ongoing discussion about the unique questions of pedagogy that art therapy educators grapple with when working with students who take up the opportunity to explore emergent aspects of the therapist identity.
In the face of the modern age of new information and technologies, new competence and qualities tackling real-life problems for innovation are of necessity. This study proposes the concept of critical cultural confidence based on the critical thinking threshold concept. It is subject to gradual improvement towards the state of affirmation of self culture in relation to the wider world. Thirty-four Chinese undergraduate students majoring in English language and taking the course of Chinese culture used the media-assisted problem-based learning (PBL) with access to different media in three learning cycles for real-life problem-solving. In this media-assisted PBL classroom, media literacy served as the core supported by the appropriate use of technology for learning. With the use of questionnaires and interviews along with results of students’ academic performance, it was found that adequate curricular design and continuous dynamic collaboration in the nurturing environment contributed to their epistemological and ontological development of critical cultural confidence. Implications for the implementation of media-assisted PBL under the inherent Chinese cultural characteristics are then provided.
Research-based learning in taught courses develops the skills needed to judge knowledge sources and think critically in a post-truth world. In viewing research skills as threshold concepts, the paper argues that transforming a student cannot be a one-off event. Research capacity must build over a programme and this requires coherent research skill development and assessment that is progressive (ipsative). A study of five programmes each with a different design of research ‘throughline’ showed that such integrated research-based learning generates three challenges. Firstly, conceptualising the research skills and progression is not easy. Secondly, the accumulation and enrichment of research skills is not readily visible to students. Finally, providing a clear support system across the programme is not straightforward. The paper concludes that these challenges need to be addressed if the potential of research-based education to enable future citizens to interrogate populist claims and reject misinformation is to be realised.
Emotions are present in all learning processes, including those in entrepreneurship education. In this paper, we investigate which kinds of emotions exist in entrepreneurship education at university and in which contexts they occur, and show how the concept of liminal spaces – spaces of transformation in which students encounter high degrees of uncertainty, while their potential for learning is maximised – can be used in order to understand the role of negative emotions for entrepreneurship education. Providing examples from courses on entrepreneurship for Engineering and Business Administration students at a German university, we are able to confirm findings of existing literature on the type and sources of emotions. Moreover, our findings suggest that reflection of students on emotional processes that involve the endurance of uncertainty contribute significantly to the achievement of learning outcomes and that – within the limits of existing learning cultures and guidelines for assessment – teachers can facilitate such processes.
p>This section considers forms of collaboration in situated and community projects embedded in important spatial transformation processes in New Zealand cities. It aims to shed light on specific combinations of material and semantic aspects characterising the relation between people and their environment. Contributions focus on participative urban transformations. The essays that follow concentrate on the dynamics of territorial production of associations between multiple actors belonging both to civil society and constituted authority. Their authors were directly engaged in the processes that are reported and conceptualised, thereby offering evidence gained through direct hands-on experience. Some of the investigations use case studies that are conspicuous examples of the recent post-traumatic urban development stemming from the Canterbury earthquakes of 2010-2011. More precisely, these cases belong to the early phases of the programmes of the Christchurch recovery or the Wellington seismic prevention. The relevance of these experiences for the scope of this study lies in the unprecedented height of public engagement at local, national and international levels, a commitment reached also due to the high impact, both emotional and concrete, that affected the entire society.
This article is an introduction to contents of Chapter III.</p
p>Recent socioeconomic and technological advancements are transforming the routines of consumption into post-consumerist practices. From a socio-spatial perspective, this is primarily driven by the augmentation of two main processes: prosumption and transduction. Addressing the condition of public space in rapidly developing cities in East Asia and Australasia, this paper discusses how these two forces have contributed to a novel spatial dimension: meta-publicness. The discussion is theoretically framed by two main streams of the research on public space: the one that approaches it as the irreducible realm of agonistic pluralism and the one which sees it as crucial to socio-spatial ontogenetic processes. The major recent concept adopted in the new civic mall planning and management, experientiality, is discussed considering two main aspects: the role of eventful spectacularised environments in these hyper-mediated depoliticised spaces, and the re-politicising agency of their hyper-mediated connectedness. This paper concludes that if a democratisation of the spectacle has introduced relevant antagonistic decommodification forces, there is an internal weakness of the system that exposes these places to an even higher hegemonic dominance.</p
Engaging students and staff effectively as partners in learning and teaching is arguably one of the most important issues facing higher education in the 21st century. Students as partners is a concept which interweaves through many other debates, including assessment and feedback, employability, flexible pedagogies, internationalisation, linking teaching and research, and retention and success. Interest in the idea has proliferated in policy and practice in the UK and internationally, particularly in the last few years. Wider economic factors and recent policy changes are influencing a contemporary environment in which students are often positioned as passive consumers of, rather than active participants in, their own higher education. It is timely to take stock and distil the current context, underlying principles and directions for future work on students as partners in learning and teaching.
The aims of this report are to:
• offer a pedagogical case for partnership in learning and teaching;
• propose a conceptual model for exploring the ways in which students act as partners in learning and teaching;
• outline how the development of partnership learning communities may guide and sustain practice;
• map the territory of strategic and sustainable practices of engaging students as partners in learning and teaching across diverse contexts;
• identify tensions and challenges inherent to partnership in learning and teaching, and offer suggestions to individuals and institutions for addressing them;
• identify priorities for further work.
This report concentrates on students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education, though we recognise that students may act as partners in many other important ways, including institutional governance, quality assurance activities, research strategies and policies, estates, community engagement, and other extra-curricular activities. Partnership in learning and teaching is one aspect of the larger picture of an institution-wide ethos and practice of partnership.
Pedagogical case for learning and working in partnership
Partnership is framed as a process of student engagement, understood as staff and students learning and working together to foster engaged student learning and engaging learning and teaching enhancement. In this sense partnership is a relationship in which all participants are actively engaged in and stand to gain from the process of learning and working together. This approach recognises that engaged student learning is positively linked with learning gain and achievement, and argues that partnership represents a sophisticated and effective approach to student engagement because it offers the potential for a more authentic engagement with the nature of learning itself and the possibility for genuinely transformative learning experiences for all involved. Hence we speak of engagement through partnership.
Partnership as a process of engagement uniquely foregrounds qualities that put reciprocal learning at the heart of the relationship, such as trust, risk, inter-dependence and agency. In its difference to other, perhaps more traditional, forms of learning and working in the academy, partnership raises awareness of implicit assumptions, encourages critical reflection and opens up new ways of thinking, learning and working in contemporary higher education.
Partnership is essentially a process of engagement, not a product. It is a way of doing things, rather than an outcome in itself. All partnership is student engagement, but not all student engagement is partnership.
Conceptual model for partnership in learning and teaching
A new conceptual model (see Figure 2.3) distinguishes four broad areas in which students can act as partners in learning and teaching:
• learning, teaching and assessment;
• subject-based research and inquiry;
• scholarship of teaching and learning;
• curriculum design and pedagogic consultancy.
Visually the model is represented as four overlapping circles to emphasise that distinctions between the areas are blurred and inter-relationships are complex and diverse when put into practice. At the centre of the model is the notion of partnership learning communities, which draws attention to the processes by which partnership operates in the four different areas.
Partnership learning communities
Embedding sustainable partnership beyond discrete projects and initiatives requires that working and learning in partnership becomes part of the culture and ethos of an institution. Partnership is more likely to be sustained where there is a strong sense of community among staff and students. The key to achieving this is the development of partnership learning communities, and certain features are seen to encourage their development:
• working and learning arrangements that support partnership;
• shared values;
• attitudes and behaviours that each member of the community signs up to and embodies in practice.
Building partnership learning communities requires critical reflection on and consideration of key issues within specific contexts of practice:
• inclusivity and scale;
• power relationships;
• reward and recognition;
• transition and sustainability;
• identity.
Partnership learning communities invite critical reflection on existing relationships, identities, processes and structures, and can potentially lead to the transformation of learning experiences. Given that partnership is both a working and learning relationship, these new communities should acknowledge the dual role of staff and students as both scholars and colleagues engaged in a process of learning and inquiry.
Mapping the territory
Partnership in learning and teaching may take many forms, and increasingly students are engaged in areas in which traditionally they have been excluded, such as curriculum and assessment design. Case studies of initiatives from a range of institutions and countries, along with conceptual frameworks drawn from international scholarship in the field, are offered to illustrate the diversity of strategic and sustainable practices in the four areas we identify in our model.
• Learning, teaching and assessment – Engaging students in partnership means seeing students as active participants in their own learning, and although not all active learning involves partnership it does mean engaging students in forms of participation and helps prepare them for the roles they may play in full partnership. Engaging students as teachers and assessors in the learning process is a particularly effective form of partnership.
• Subject-based research and inquiry – Whether it involves selected students working with staff on research projects or all students on a course engaging in inquiry-based learning, there is much evidence of the effectiveness of this approach in stimulating deep and retained learning. As with active learning, not all ways of engaging students in research and inquiry involve partnership, but there are many examples where students have extensive autonomy and independence and negotiate as partners many of the details of the research and inquiry projects that they undertake.
• Scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) – Conducting projects in partnership with students has been suggested as one of the five principles of good practice in SoTL. There are an increasing number of effective initiatives of engaging students as change agents in institutions where they undertake research projects into the learning and teaching they experience with the intention of enhancing the quality of student learning.
• Curriculum design and pedagogic consultancy – Students are commonly engaged in course evaluations and in departmental staff-student committees, but it is rarer for institutions to go beyond the student voice and engage students as partners in designing the curriculum and giving pedagogic advice and consultancy. Yet where institutions have implemented such initiatives they have seen significant benefits for both students and staff.
Students as partners operate in many different settings – module/course, programme, department/faculty, institution, and nationally/internationally. Cutting across these settings is the additional dimension of the disciplinary or inter-disciplinary context.
Tensions, challenges and suggestions
Working and learning in partnership heightens an awareness of conflicting priorities and tensions between the different perspectives and motivations of those involved, and it raises challenges to existing assumptions and norms about higher education. Partnership also offers possibilities for thinking and acting differently, and for effecting a fundamental transformation of higher education.
Key tensions are identified, and suggestions for addressing them in different contexts are offered. The focus is not on prescribing specific practices or outcomes, but on helping to create conditions for enabling fruitful change through learning and working in partnership.
Students and staff
Students and staff will have different motivations for engaging in partnership, and the different positions occupied within organisational structures give rise to tensions around differentials in power, reward and recognition of participation, identity, and responsibility for partnership work. Working and learning in partnership is rarely automatic and can present significant challenges to existing ways of being, doing and thinking.
Suggestions for addressing this tension:
• co-develop partnership values with the people you want to partner with, and think about how behaviour and attitudes embody these values;
• consider the scale of your partnership initiative, and how to reduce barriers to participation, especially among marginalised or traditionally under-represented groups (e.g. part-time students, international students);
• be honest about when partnership is not appropriate or desirable;
• explore possibilities for joint professional development for staff and students;
• embed partnership approaches in postgraduate academic professional development courses for teachers;
• consider how partnership can be used to explore dimensions of professional practice outlined in the UK Professional Standards Framework (UKPSF).
Policy and pedagogy
There is potential for an inherent tension between partnership policy and partnership pedagogy in that policy is about determining the direction and shape of work in advance, whereas partnership pedagogy is about being (radically) open to and creating possibilities for discovering and learning something that cannot be known beforehand.
Suggestions for addressing this tension:
• remain aware of the tension while creating policy that values the flexibility and openness of partnership;
• consider how partnership is (or is not) described in institutional policies and strategies (e.g. learning and teaching strategies, student charters, partnership agreements, marketing materials);
• consider implementing staff and student engagement surveys to provide a more nuanced picture of the views, priorities and experiences of potential partners to inform local policy;
• use participatory and whole-system approaches to the development of strategy and policy in ways that seek to embody partnership in practice.
Cognitive dissonance
A partnership approach may be directly at odds with principles embodied in key drivers and mechanisms which have a strong influence on behaviour and attitudes among staff and students. In the UK, this includes the National Student Survey (NSS), Key Information Sets (KIS), institutional key performance indicators, and the Research Excellence Framework (REF). These place an emphasis on the importance of quantifiable information and the achievement of specific outcomes and impacts, whereas a partnership approach places value on a creative process that may result in unexpected outcomes.
Suggestions for addressing this tension:
• look for opportunities for employing partnership as a way of responding to other influential discourses;
• use the concept and practice of partnership to meet the requirements of the UK Quality Code, and in particular the seven indicators of sound practice in chapter B5 on student engagement;
• consider how reward and recognition for partnership may be developed – for staff and students.
Students’ unions and institutions
Partnership in learning and teaching is part of a larger institutional picture and is supported by a coherent cross-institutional approach that is promoted and embodied through the relationship between a students’ union and its institution. Traditionally students’ unions have acted as an independent champion of students’ interests, sometimes challenging institutional practice and policy. A partnership approach raises questions about how it is possible for students’ unions to balance this politically orientated role while working in new ways with their institutions.
Suggestions for addressing this tension:
• institutions and students’ unions should reflect on how their relationship provides (or does not) a context for local-level partnerships. Committing to partnership agreements, principles and manifestos is a way of indicating seriousness about partnership for the institution as a whole;
• consider how student and students’ union-led activities may contribute to partnership in learning and teaching;
• develop a whole-institution approach to partnership, in active collaboration with professional services, educational and learning development, academic departments, students’ unions and student societies, which extends beyond learning and teaching to encompass institutional governance and other aspects of staff and student experiences.
Fundamental purpose and structure of higher education
Current policy discourse around ‘students as partners’ and ‘student engagement’ can assume a consensus that higher education as a free public provision is no longer tenable, and thereby sidestep the wish and need for further debate among students and staff.
Suggestion for addressing this tension:
• explore how partnership (with an emphasis on the importance of re-distribution of power and openness to new ways of working and learning together), can provide a conceptual space in which to reflect on the nature and aims of higher education as well as effect change in practical ways.
The ideas presented in this publication can be considered in conjunction with the shorter, practically-focused companion HEA publication, Framework for partnership in learning and teaching.
Priorities for further work
Despite the innovative work in the field of student partnership in higher education in recent years, there remain substantial areas where further investigation would be desirable. Priorities for research and the development of practice in the sector are identified:
• developing understanding of disciplinary pedagogies of partnership;
• sharing and learning from experiences of when partnership does not work, and why;
• building a robust evidence base for the impact of partnership for students, staff, institutions and students’ unions;
• investigating differences in experiences and perceptions of partnership among students and staff;
• developing an ethical framework for partnership in learning and teaching;
• building on the excellent work of and collaboration between various agencies (including in the UK National Union of Students, Quality Assurance Agency, The Student Engagement Partnership, Student Participation in Quality Scotland and Wales Initiative for Student Engagement and the Higher Education Academy) to support the sector to develop and embed partnership in practice and policy.
Concluding thoughts
A partnership approach might not be right for everyone, nor is it possible in every context. This report does not aim to be prescriptive, but to call for opening up to the possibilities and exploring the potential that partnership can offer. There is much to be gained by engaging with partnership in learning in teaching in higher education. The wider adoption of research findings on engagement through partnership can lead to significant improvements in student learning and success.
Most partnership work – across the spectrum of engaged learning and inquiry to quality enhancement and the scholarship of learning and teaching – still engages relatively few students. It is important for the future of higher education and the quality of students’ learning to be critical about current ways of working and to strive to make partnership and its substantial benefits available to all.
It is widely accepted in the higher education literature that a student-centred approach is pedagogically superior to a teacher-centred approach. In this paper, we explore the notion of student-centredness as a threshold concept and the implications this might have for academic staff development. We argue that the term student-centred in the Rogerian sense implies a focus on the person of the student and is deeply resonant with Barnett's assertion that the emergent being of the student is as important as the development of skills and knowledge. To facilitate transformative learning in higher education an academic must know how to value the person of the student in the learning process. Academic staff development initiatives need to work with the person of the academic and take into account the level of personal development required for each academic to be able to facilitate this kind of learning.
This essay describes the process of using a team of faculty and undergraduate students to redesign a university course, and outlines the research we conducted on student and faculty learning from the redesign process. We focus particular attention on power relations and issues of expertise, raising questions with implications for faculty who wish to engage students in similar course design projects, regardless of academic discipline, and who partner with undergraduates in Scholarship of Teaching and Learning research.
The paper by Meyer & Land (2003) represents an interesting and unusual analysis of knowledge across disciplines, which raises profound questions about the nature of knowledge and learning. The fact that different disciplines have different views of knowledge (something I will examine later), may or may not be related to their different views of learning, but it is these latter views I want to examine as a basis for looking again at the way Meyer and Land construe their empirical data.
This paper will argue that different views of learning will determine how ‘threshold concepts’ and ‘troublesome knowledge’ are conceived and that each view has different implications for pedagogic responses, some not altogether helpful to those trying to educate students in higher education!
Belonging-with peers, in the classroom, or on campus-is a crucial part of the college experience. it can affect a student's degree of academic achievement, or even whether they stay in school. Although much is known about the causes and impact of sense of belonging in students, little is known about how belonging differs based on students' social identities, such as race, gender, or sexual orientation, or the conditions they encounter on campus.
In this book we explore how and why faculty and students can engage as partners in teaching and learning in higher education. This collaborative process may not come naturally to students or faculty. Students often come to higher education from schools that emphasize high-stakes testing, not shared inquiry. Faculty have
spent years developing disciplinary expertise, sometimes in rigidly hierarchical graduate programs, creating intellectual and cultural distance between our students and ourselves. Despite these and many other barriers, many of us have cultivated pedagogical habits that treat students as active contributors to learning and in some cases practices that invite students to be active contributors to teaching. As we will show, student-faculty partnerships—through which participants engage reciprocally, although not necessarily in the same ways— have transformational potential for individuals, courses, curricula, and institutions.
The present study builds on earlier work by Meyer and Land (2003) which introduced the generative notion of threshold concepts within (and across) disciplines, in the sense of transforming the internal view of subject matter or part thereof. In this earlier work such concepts were further linked to forms of knowledge that are troublesome, after the work of Perkins (1999). It was argued that these twinned sets of ideas may define critical moments of irreversible conceptual transformation in the educational experiences of learners, and their teachers. The present study aims (a) to examine the extent to which such phenomena can be located within personal understandings of discipline-specific epistemological discourses, (b) to develop more extensively notions of liminality within learning that were raised in the first paper, and (c) to propose a conceptual framework within which teachers may advance their own reflective practice.
Understanding privilege Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education, 9. Retrieved from http
- S Abbot
Expanding the definition of ‘Threshold Concept’. Teaching and Learning Togetherin Higher Education
- E Maitre
Introduction: Crossing thresholds together. Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education
- P Felten
Topographies of knowing in 299B: Junior seminar. Teaching and Learning Togetherin Higher Education
- L Mcgrane
Being comfortable with uncertainty. Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education
- S Jenness
Why the process of learning matters: Expanding my own definition of threshold concepts. Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education
- H Bahn
Understanding privilege. Teaching and Learning Together in Higher Education
- S Abbot