Curriculum 2016 Briefing Note A: Using a Threshold
Concepts Approach to Inform Curriculum Design
Dr. Elizabeth Cleaver, Learning Enhancement & Academic Practice (LEAP)
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Introduction
As part of the Curriculum 2016 Change Programme the University of Hull is drawing on,
adapting and synthesising the insights of a number of existing theoretical and conceptual
frameworks for, and empirically-informed approaches to, curriculum design, teaching,
learning and assessment. Together these create a unique model and framework for
curriculum and pedagogic design at Hull.
This briefing document provides further information on Threshold Concepts1 and their use as
a starting point for curriculum design. It forms one in a series of briefing documents which,
together with LEAP facilitated curriculum development sessions, will support programme
portfolio teams to consider and actively design the content of their curriculum and teaching,
learning and assessment approaches and practices.
Four key principles underpin this approach to Curriculum and Pedagogic Design:
a) Thinking outside of the module-box: prioritising coherent programme-level curriculum
design over individual module developments;
b) Involving a range of stakeholders: engaging students, staff (from both relevant academic
areas and a range of service areas) employers and professional, statutory and regulatory
bodies in programme-level curriculum design;
c) Making the implicit explicit: developing a shared understanding amongst curriculum
creators and users - teachers and learners - about how and why the curriculum and
associated approaches to teaching, learning and assessment are actively designed to
promote student learning;
d) Starting From the Discipline2: understanding how the epistemic3 and cultural beliefs of
the discipline form an important starting point for curriculum and pedagogic design.
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It is important to note that the term Threshold Concepts has been recognised by Ray Land as a term that can
be misconstrued in a narrow way, as it implies that only the transformation of ‘conceptual’ understandings are
included in this approach. More recently Land (2012) has argued that if the project were to be developed again
a term such as ‘learning thresholds’ might be more useful as it covers a range of disciplinary learning practices
and learning states as well as key conceptual frameworks and ideas that together transform students ways of
knowing, seeing, thinking and doing.
2
In the Curriculum 2016 Briefing Note series, Discipline is used as shorthand to describe the subject areas or
areas of practice that are fundamental to each degree programme; we recognise that many degree
programmes do not draw on a discrete discipline per se, but reflect a field of study or area of practice which
itself draws on a range of disciplinary and practice-based knowledge and understandings.
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The term Episteme is used to describe particular understandings and perceptions of what ‘knowledge’ is, how
it is created and how it is best communicated. We acknowledge that these understandings and perceptions
may differ across and even within each programme of study. However, it is expected that the core disciplines
C16 Briefing Note A: Using a Threshold Concepts Approach to Inform Curriculum Design
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A Brief Overview of Threshold Concepts
Fundamental to this conceptual framework is that all programmes at study at University
involve student’s passing through gateways or ‘portals’ to arrive at important new
understandings, ways of thinking and ways of doing. The seminal paper on Threshold
Concepts states:
A threshold concept can be considered as akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously
inaccessible way of thinking about something. It represents a transformed way of
understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something, without which the learning cannot
progress. As a consequence of comprehending a threshold concept, there may thus be a
transformed internal view of subject matter, subject landscape, or even world view. This
transformation may be sudden or it may be protracted over a considerable period of time,
with the transition to understanding [perhaps] proving troublesome. Such a transformed
view or landscape may represent how people ‘think’ in a particular discipline, or how they
perceive, apprehend of experience particular phenomena within the discipline (or more
generally). (Meyer and Land, 2003: p.412)
If we unpick this quotation, we uncover the fundamental principles of threshold concepts
which help us to identify them within our subject area:
Threshold Concepts are (see Land, Meyer and Smith, 2008, p.x):
 Transformative (they will involve significant shift in perceptions and understanding);
 Integrative (they are likely to expose interrelatedness, that may have previously been
hidden from students, and perhaps some staff, in programmes of study);
 Irreversible ( they are unlikely to be forgotten or unlearned);
 Troublesome (for many students they can be difficult to grasp or uncomfortable to
comprehend; although some may cross the threshold without noticing);
 Bounded (they can help to define the boundaries of disciplinary terrain);
 Discursive (as we gain new understandings, we are changed by it, and these shifts can
be reflected in our communication and language).
While students are crossing learning thresholds – particularly if this is a protracted process they may enter a liminal space; a space that may be characterised by confusion, disjunction
and troublesomeness. During this time we need to explore ways in which we can support
students as they are confronted with new ideas and practices which may challenge some of
their existing and embedded world views.
Since the seminal work in this area, which emerged over a decade ago from the Economic
and Social Research Council’s Teaching and Learning Research Programme (ESRC TLRP), a
range of work has taken place in identifying disciplinary Threshold Concepts and an
International Threshold Concepts conference takes place biennially. As the conference
website for the 2014 conferences states, there is now an empirical research base comprising
hundreds of academic papers from over 120 disciplinary and professional contexts, and from
authors in the higher education sectors of many countries (see Flannigan, 2013). This
and areas of practice that underpin each programme of study will play a key role in formulating each area’s
understanding of knowledge (their epistemic starting points).
C16 Briefing Note A: Using a Threshold Concepts Approach to Inform Curriculum Design
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provides a great deal of extant work for teams at Hull to draw upon; we do not need to start
from scratch or reinvent the wheel entirely.
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Why is a Threshold Concepts approach to Curriculum Design Useful?
This approach differs from traditional content/knowledge-based, or more recent modulefocused, approaches to curriculum design. It places the core ways of thinking, ways of
knowing and ways of doing in a discipline or area of practice at the heart of curriculum design,
with ‘content’ or knowledge forming illustrative material to support the development of core
skills and understandings. This is not to belittle the importance of content and knowledge,
but to recognise that fundamental to our developing knowledge and its usefulness is the
development of the skills of critical thinking, application and understanding. It is important
at this stage to recognise that many existing programmes at Hull will take this approach to a
greater or lesser extent already, but may not have been undertaken in a conscious and active
team-based way which includes student-input. The challenge at the core of Curriculum 2016
is for programme teams to take this approach on board actively and to create a shared and
explicit understanding amongst all students and staff involved as to why the curriculum is
designed in the way it is: How does the curriculum help staff to facilitate students’
development of the core ways of thinking, ways of knowing and ways of doing that lie at the
heart of the programme of study?
An additional and extremely pertinent product of this process is likely to be an explicit
understanding and articulation of the employability skills at the heart of the discipline
(something which we explore in greater detail in Briefing Note D of this series: Embedding
Graduate Attributes and Employability in Curriculum Design).
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What will programme teams be asked to do?
Teams will be asked to identify three to five high level ‘big ideas’ – probably articulating the
key ideas and ways of thinking, practising and knowing that lie at the heart of their discipline
or area of practice. So for example, a team redesigning a BA (Hons) Working with Children,
Young People and Families at another university identified the following three big ideas as
their starting point for curriculum design (see Monk et al, 2012):



The importance of helping students to recognise differences between their
professional and personal identities and values (which may exist in parallel but may
be extremely different);
The wish to develop evolving critical practitioners ; and
The importance of linking theory, policy and practice (these latter two ideas, explicitly
encapsulate some of the core benefits of learning in higher education, rather than ‘on
the job’).
The articulation of these ‘big ideas’ (that themselves are likely to incorporate high-level
threshold concepts – for example, ‘critical practitioner’, ‘practice’, ‘theory’ and ‘identity’ as
articulated in the illustrative example above) will help teams to make explicit many of the
core understandings and assumptions that have been embedded in their work to date
(perhaps implicitly) and to make these explicit to each other and to students.
C16 Briefing Note A: Using a Threshold Concepts Approach to Inform Curriculum Design
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Such an approach then sets the foundations for the development of more focused design
using threshold concepts that supports the building of students’ knowledge, and ways of
understanding and applying that knowledge within the discipline both in and across modules.
The questions outlined in Figure 1 draw on the work of Cousin (2008; Chapter 13) and are
designed to help with the identification of the big ideas at the heart of the programme of
study, and the core themes and threshold concepts that will influence curriculum design at
the stage and modular level. Figure 2 then provides a four stage process to adopting this
approach:
C16 Briefing Note A: Using a Threshold Concepts Approach to Inform Curriculum Design
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Figure 1: Identifying the Big Ideas and Threshold Concepts at the Heart of the Programme
What questions should I ask of myself,
my students and my peers?
- What high-level threshold concepts or
‘big ideas’ are crucial to the mastery
of your subject area?
 Why are they fundamental?
 How do they help to define, or
how are they defined by, the
disciplinary ways of thinking,
knowing and doing at the heart of
your programme of study?
- What extent is their mastery
‘troublesome’?
 Are students exhibiting
misunderstandings?
 Do students ‘mimic’ understanding?
- What more detailed threshold
concepts are essential to support
students in ‘getting’ the big ideas?
- What relationships exist between the
threshold concepts identified?
- Given these relationships, what is the
best way to fit them together in as a
programme curriculum and to make
the linkages clear?
- How might I develop my ways of
teaching and supporting students to
ensure all have opportunities to cross
these key thresholds of learning?
What evidence should I draw upon?
Reflection
- What concepts, processes and skills
do students struggle with?
-
What learning and teaching activities
are used to support students to engage
in individual/peer learning on the
threshold concepts encountered?
Documentary analysis
-
Do key areas of misunderstanding
arise in feedback to students?
- Do students highlight difficulties in
difficult in MEQs/SSCCs?
Discussions with students, peers and
professional bodies
- What do students find difficult; can
they articulate the big ideas at the
heart of your programme of study?
- Can employers/professional bodies
shed light on the big ideas and any
key areas of difficulty that students
encounter?
- What do other staff think that
students find difficult; can they also
articulate the big ideas at the heart
of your programme of study?
C16 Briefing Note A: Using a Threshold Concepts Approach to Inform Curriculum Design
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Figure 2: Putting it into practice
What are
the'big ideas' the key
concepts and
ways of
knowing,
thinking and
practising that lie at the
heart of your
programme of
study
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How can the
'big ideas'
thread through
your
programme
and what other
threshold
concepts are
central to
students
'getting' these
big ideas?
How can you
redesign
learning
activities to
maximise and
support the
crossing of
thresholds of
learning?
How can
formative and
summative
assessment
tasks be
designed to
confirm that
thresholds
have been
crossed?
What support will be available?
Members of the LEAP team are available to work with programme teams to develop
programme curricula, assessment and teaching and learning approaches. A series of
meetings will be planned with each programme team to support them in the development
work outlined in this document. Future versions of this Briefing Note will include examples
taken from implementation and practice from the Curriculum 2016 Pilot Studies.
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References and Further Reading:
Cousin, G. (2006) An Introduction to Threshold Concepts. Planet. 17, 4-5. [online]
http://www.gees.ac.uk/planet/p17/gc.pdf Accessed 9th May 2014.
Cousin, G. (2008) Researching Learning in Higher Education: An Introduction to
Contemporary Methods and Approaches, Abingdon & NY: Routledge.
C16 Briefing Note A: Using a Threshold Concepts Approach to Inform Curriculum Design
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Flannigan, M (2013) Threshold Concepts: Undergraduate Teaching, Postgraduate Training
and Professional Development A short introduction and bibliography. [online]
http://www.ee.ucl.ac.uk/~mflanaga/thresholds.html. Accessed 9th May 2014.
Land, R (2012) Threshold Concepts and Educational Development. Presentation to the
Standing Conference on Academic Practice, University of Warwick. 06.07.12
Land, R, Meyer, J and Smith, J (2008) ‘Editor’s Preface’. In Land, R, Meyer, J and Smith, J. (Eds)
Threshold Concepts within the Disciplines. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Meyer, J. and Land, R. (2003) Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge. Occasional Report 4.
ETL project. [online] http://www.etl.tla.ed.ac.uk//docs/ETLreport4.pdf. Accessed 9th May 2014
Monk, C., Cleaver, E. Hyland C. and Brotherton, G (2012) Nurturing the Independent
Thinking Practioner: Using Threshold Concepts to Transform Undergraduate Learning.
Journal of Pedagogic Development. 2(3) [online] http://www.beds.ac.uk/jpd/journal-ofpedagogic-development-volume-2-issue-3/nuturing-the-independent-thinking-practitionerusing-threshold-concepts-to-transform-undergraduate-learning. Accessed 9th May 2014.
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