Academic cultures and disciplines have very particular ways of thinking and constructing knowledge. This particular way of thinking and doing can be challenging to someone unfamiliar with a particular academic discipline. Student difficulty in learning might be tied to how instructors and students see the discipline. Consequently, decoding one’s discipline at the beginning of the semester can facilitate student learning and create an environment of inclusion. One way to decode a discipline is to introduce students to threshold concepts.
Threshold concepts are not content knowledge or core concepts, but instead “represent a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which the learner cannot progress.” Unfamiliarity with a discipline’s threshold concepts can create student bottlenecks that manifest themselves in three forms:
- Procedural bottlenecks in which a student has not mastered the steps that are necessary for successfully completing the tasks required in a course.
- Epistemological bottlenecks in which a student fails to understand the basic nature of knowledge construction in a discipline.
- Emotional bottlenecks in which a student’s affective reaction to the nature of the discipline or of the subject matter hinders learning.
The infusion of threshold concepts not only allows faculty to identify areas in their courses where students might get stuck, “but it also grants them the opportunity to design curriculum, learning activities, assessment, and feedback strategies that help students attain the transformed understanding necessary to be successful in a course.” The use of this framework will allow faculty to begin creating a learning environment that will facilitate student social-emotional engagement.
Let us explore threshold concepts a little further with an example taken from Early World Civilizations history course at El Camino College. Before any course content is covered, the instructor dedicates a week to decode the study of history to the students. For example, the students learn that history “represents an integrated way of thinking, defined by a system of ideas, leading to a distinctive and systematic way of questioning.” This way of thinking is referred to as historical thinking. They also learn that was is truly studied in a history course is not necessarily the past as it was, but rather a narrative of the past as historians think it was.
In order for students to understand that the study of history is not the study of facts and dates, a belief the vast majority bring with them to a college level history course, the instructor introduces the threshold concepts that make up historical thinking. Without decoding what the discipline of history is, students cannot successfully complete formative assessments and activities that require the use of historical thinking and that ultimately lead to mastering the courses student learning outcomes. Below is an example of how threshold concepts is integrated into a world history course.
