Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: linkages to ways of thinking and practising within the disciplines

This paper arises from ongoing research undertaken by the Economics team of the ESRC/ TLRP Project ‘Enhancing Teaching and Learning Environments’ (ETL) 1 . This forms part of the large scale ESRC Teaching and Learning Research Programme Phase 2. ETL is seeking to identify factors leading to high quality learning environments within five disciplin ary contexts across a range of HE institutions. Mey er’s notion of a threshold concept was introduced into project discussions on learnin g outcomes as a particular basis for differentiating between core learning out comes that represent ‘seeing things in a new way’ a nd those that do not. A threshold concept is thus seen as something distinct within what university teach ers would typically describe as ‘core concepts’. Furthe rmore, threshold concepts may represent, or lead to , what Perkins (1999) describes as ‘troublesome knowledge’ — knowledge that is conceptually difficult, counter-intuitive or ‘alien’. The paper attempts to define characteristics of threshold concepts and, in the light of Perkins’ work, to indicate correspondences between the notion of threshold concepts and that of ‘troublesome knowledge.’