Exploring practices, improving student learning: Threshold Concepts conference 2008

Abstract

In the summer of 2006, the GEES Subject Centre ran a residential conference entitled “What on Earth...? Student Learning in Geography, Earth & Environmental Sciences” (http://www.gees.ac.uk/ events/2006/ac06/ac06.htm). The purpose of the event was to consider key concepts, student misconceptions, and bottlenecks in learning in higher education and, in particular, it explored the notion of ‘Threshold Concepts’. Threshold Concepts are those key ideas in a discipline that offer the learner a gateway to new ways of thinking (Meyer & Land, 2003). Whilst the learner is developing their understanding of a threshold concept, they may fi nd themselves temporarily stuck in a ‘state of liminality’ (literally ‘on the threshold’) where their grasp of the concept may be limited or confused with other (mis)conceptions. Meyer and Land suggest that threshold concepts can be characterised in the following ways: