Threshold Concepts within the Disciplines
Edited by Ray Land, Jan Meyer, & Jan Smith (Sense Publishers, 2008)
I have wide-ranging professional interests and curiosities. Each time I begin exploring a new academic area, I always return to Threshold Concepts within the Disciplines to help me make sense of the new intellectual terrain.
The learning theory this book offers — the “threshold concept” — is straightforward: In each academic discipline, there exist ideas or concepts that serve as portals into the discipline. Learn these concepts and the whole field begins to reveal itself, like passing through the turnstile into the amusement park. Sometimes referred to as “jewels of the curriculum,” these concepts — like opportunity cost in economics, or “deep time” in geology — allow educators to focus on the richest and most impactful ideas within the discipline.
However, these threshold concepts often prove to be challenging for the learner: sometimes cognitively challenging and sometimes emotionally, as learners must often let go of previously held beliefs or even ways of understanding the world. As an instructor and scholar who works across multiple subject areas, I find it a powerful exercise to ask myself what the threshold concepts might be in my disciplines and how I can support my students through the often difficult, sometimes meandering, and occasionally uncomfortable process of learning them.
This article appears in the December 2024 issue of Kappan, Vol. 106, No. 4, p. 7.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
William L. Smith
WILLIAM L. SMITH is an associate professor of teaching, learning, and sociocultural studies at the University of Arizona, Tucson.
