Improving student learning through the curriculum. 16th Improving Student Learning symposium,
Durham, September 2008
Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge in distance education. Assessing a new
model for enhancing facilitation and course design.
Macdonald, J. and Black, A.
Open University in Scotland
Abstract
Arguably the effective enhancement of teaching and learning is more likely to take place when
generic lessons are contextualised within the language of the discipline, and adapted to the
needs of the students. This is a case study of the teaching practice of distance tutors on a
History course, who were given the opportunity for extended reflection on the demands of the
course, their aims and strategies, stimulated by ideas from threshold concepts and troublesome
knowledge. Reflection took place in a workshop followed by entries into a wiki. We illustrate the
significant or difficult areas of the course which staff reported and describe their intentions and
some of the strategies which they used for helping students with these critical areas. We
propose a new model for professional development which begins with the demands of the
course itself and its students before considering appropriate facilitation strategies to meet those
specific demands.
Keywords: professional development; facilitation; course design; online communities;
Introduction
Professional development for academic staff in Higher Education has traditionally taken place
either in face to face events, or alternatively in accredited courses, supplemented by printed or
web based resources on effective practice. However the challenge has always been to
encourage staff to engage with these resources, so that good practice becomes embedded in a
way which is meaningful and relevant to the individual context. Arguably enhancement of
teaching and learning is more effective when generic lessons are enlivened and contextualised
within the language of the discipline. There is also much scope for the exchange of good
practice between staff, either at the point of need or between new and experienced staff.
While we assume that effective professional development should offer a grounding in academic
practice, teachers in Higher Education have tended to adopt implicit or tacit assumptions about
good practice, which are related to the culture of the discipline and perceptions of what it takes
to develop a “mathematician’s approach”, or to “think like a historian”. In an environment where
tutors commonly operate at a distance, this situation can be exacerbated, because tutors have
few opportunities to meet and exchange views on their implicit assumptions. We need
opportunities to enhance practice through reflection on teaching, and to review and externalise
intentions and beliefs on effective approaches.
This paper describes a case study of the teaching practice of a group of distance tutors on a
second level History course, who were given the opportunity for extended reflection on the
demands of the course, their teaching intentions and strategies, as a new model for professional
development within the discipline. The sections which follow describe current influential thinking
in generic versus subject specific discussion on the processes of learning; and the identification
of troublesome knowledge and threshold concepts in course content. We go on to discuss the
opportunities and constraints of teaching and learning in a distance environment, before
describing the project implementation.
Generic vs. subject specific discussion
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We know that subject disciplines make an important contribution to the context of learning. For
example, Ramsden (1997) described student perceptions of learning tasks in Science as
“hierarchical, logical, heterogeneous and rule and procedure-governed”. On the other hand Arts
and Social Science tasks were perceived as “requiring interpretation, comparison,
generalisation”. Neumann, Parry & Becher (2002) described disciplinary areas in terms of
curriculum, assessment, the characteristics of teachers, requirements of students, types of
teaching method and main cognitive purpose (which refers to students’ competencies, such as
logical reasoning; problem solving; practical skills; creativity; fluency of expression). Their
analysis illustrated the factors which combine to influence the way in which a discipline is
taught.
Two inter-related theories have recently been particularly influential in discussions on teaching
and learning within the disciplines, and they are threshold concepts and troublesome
knowledge. Threshold concepts are effectively the “big moments” in a course, which relate to a
way of understanding the discipline. Meyer & Land (2006) describe them as:
“… 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 learner cannot progress.”
(p 5)
They characterise threshold concepts as being transformative meaning that they may lead to
new ways of seeing the subject, and sometimes even new ways of being; probably irreversible
in that once learnt they are unlikely to be forgotten; and integrative in that they may lead to an
integrated understanding of the subject. Initially, some students may experience a state of
liminality, in which they oscillate between a full, integrated understanding of a concept and a
partial one: there is a danger that some students can lose confidence at this point and drop out
of study. So in summary, these are major areas of the curriculum which students must get to
grips with in order to proceed with their studies. They may be related to particular content, or to
a way of thinking and learning. Paradoxically, if such concepts are irreversible it may be that
some staff find it difficult to imagine a time when they did not understand their discipline, and
that means it can be problematic for them to explain it to others.
Related to these ideas, and effectively acting as a barrier to understanding threshold concepts,
Perkins (1999; 2006) describes how certain knowledge can prove troublesome for students in
different ways. He describes a number of common areas: ritual knowledge has a routine, and
meaningless character; inert knowledge “sits in the mind’s attic” lacking connection to reality, or
to everyday applications; conceptually difficult knowledge is when reasonable but mistaken
expectations and intuitive beliefs all get in the way of comprehension; foreign or alien
knowledge comes from an unfamiliar perspective; and finally tacit knowledge is knowledge of
which students may be entirely unconscious. Some experience in the field (Cousin, 2008)
suggests that such concepts are relevant to the reasons that some students have difficulty at
certain points in a course. They can also be useful for staff reflection on their approaches to
teaching, because subject specificity can animate the generic.
Our interest in these theories is to use them to stimulate a systematic discussion on the
teaching of History, with the aim of inspiring staff to talk about their subject and the difficulties
they encounter in teaching it, as a springboard to discussing appropriate strategies. We
recognise that there is a long tradition of learning theories which serve to underpin and explain
the ways in which students learn, and therefore we began with no pre-conceived notions of
assuming that problems in teaching parts of the curriculum were necessarily or solely the result
of troublesome knowledge or of threshold concepts within the History course.
Teaching and learning at a distance: the Open University (UK)
Many of the lessons learnt in this area are drawn from a campus-based context which differs
from distance education in terms of geographical distance between all players in the game.
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Indeed the question arises as to how such conversations might transfer to a distance
environment. Distance education is characterised by a separation of course design from
support, tuition and facilitation (known collectively in the Open University (UK) as course
presentation). While course material is written and extensively edited to a high quality by a team
of academics, the students’ understanding of course content is supported and facilitated at
scale by part-time academic tutors who may be geographically highly distributed. So where
commonly in a campus based university the originator of content is also responsible for content
delivery and facilitation, these responsibilities are divided between large numbers of staff, who
may have a range of perspectives on the curriculum being taught. In particular, tutors are in a
unique position since they have first hand knowledge of the course as experienced by the
students, knowledge which may be rather different to the course as envisaged by the course
teams who designed the course. At the same time, there is potential for a wide range of tutor
perspectives on course content and difficulty. Tutors also have responsibility for supporting the
process of learning, which is sometimes developed as an integral part of course content and
assessment, but at other times needs to respond to individual or general concerns, which were
not envisaged during original course design.
Professional development and the enhancement of good teaching practice is challenging in a
distance environment, where face-to-face events are expensive and logistically difficult to
organise. Opportunities for conversations on course teaching and the exchange of good
practice commonly take place in an initial face-to-face briefing for tutors at the outset of a new
course, with a debriefing after the first year on some course.
In addition tutors are encouraged to attend professional development events which provide
course or Faculty specific workshops alongside more generic sessions. For example tutors
would commonly receive help in writing helpful formative feedback on assignments, in the
facilitation of discussion groups, or in supporting students using the telephone or online media.
We are aware that provision which is discipline specific is more likely to appeal to time
pressured staff, who view subject related events as an attractive proposition.
The use of online communities allows for reflection to be sustained regardless of time and
place, and therefore is of particular relevance to part-time or distance tutors, or indeed to any
group of staff who are not regularly co-located. Online communities are already enthusiastically
embraced for tutors on some courses, where a staff forum caters for ongoing discussion as the
course proceeds, and can be particularly significant during assignment marking, when tutors
may use the online group to discuss their understanding of the question, or of marking criteria.
Not surprisingly, core duties associated with tutoring students drive the habitual use of these
groups, and make a discussion of other aspects of teaching more likely to occur (Macdonald &
Hewling, 2008). The current project builds on this work with its focus on raising awareness of
difficult parts of a course, and promoting the exchange of good practice in tutoring using a wiki
environment, for the potential benefit of both new and experienced tutors.
This paper describes a methodology for reflection on the teaching of a History course through
the eyes of a group of tutors. By adopting a systematic approach to the discussion of the
course, we hoped to raise awareness of parts of the course where students particularly need
help, either through tutor intervention or through course design and its assessment, or other
measures.
Methodology
Exploring History: medieval to modern 1400-1900 (A200) is a 60pt level 2 course, which is now
in its 2nd year of presentation. It has 1570 students, supported by 60 tutors. The course aims to
empower students with knowledge and understanding of six key periods in history, with three
common themes running through the blocks. It aims to equip students with historical skills in
source analysis and the presentation of arguments supported by evidence. The course is
demanding as it requires detailed knowledge and a critical approach. It is also heavily resource
3
based and students must learn to process a range of complex materials, including primary and
secondary sources, evidence from material culture and numerical data.
A200 had just completed its first course presentation, with the inevitable hiccups, and it seemed
an appropriate time to review the course as it was encountered through the experience of the
tutors. A total of five tutors took part in the project: four men and one woman. One was new to
teaching with the OU, another had two years experience and the other three had between eight
and thirty eight years of experience. Two worked in other HE or FE institutions, and one worked
full time for the OU.
A full day workshop was organised for tutor participants, combining discussion of the theories of
threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge with their potential applicability to the teaching
of history. Tutors discussed difficult points of the course with their peers, and rationalised a list
of significant or problem areas throughout the course. They then discussed a range of activities
and interventions which could be used to help students with these specific points in the course,
in online, telephone or face-to-face tuition.
A wiki was set up for the project as a closed user group with a commercial wiki provider. Our
intention was to provide an opportunity for extended reflection and to develop a “book of course
teaching” offering the potential for the sharing and development of resources. A record of the
output from the workshops was included, together with pages for description of difficult parts of
the course and for interventions. The emphasis was on troublesome knowledge rather than
threshold concepts because the tutors seemed to find this idea easier to apply to practice. As
part of their contribution to the project, tutors were asked to visit the wiki once a month, in order
to reflect on current experiences with the course and to share any relevant handouts or tutorial
plans with fellow tutors. A wiki moderator was appointed: to remind participants once a month
that their contributions were due, and to organise the wiki as it grew, providing links between
pages. The wiki was made available to the wider community of other tutors working on the same
course, as well as to the course team.
The wiki contains 19 pages each of which had between 1-9 revisions, in addition to 10 files
containing tutorial handouts and other notes. Four out of five tutors contributed to varying
4
degrees, in addition to two other interested tutors and the researcher. A number of other tutors
visited the site but the software did not allow us to trace their identity. The wiki was set up in
November 2007 containing an initial report of the workshop. Contributions and modifications
were made during course presentation from mid Feb 2008 until the end of May.
The project concluded with a reflective exercise in which tutor participants were asked to visit
the wiki and assess the extent to which they agreed with the problem areas identified by their
colleagues and to consider whether the material deposited there could be of relevance to their
tutoring practice.
In writing this paper, we have adopted a case study approach which Stake (1994) describes as
“refining theory and suggesting complexities for further investigation, as well as helping to
establish the limits of generalizability”(p245). In terms of data, two sets of notes were taken
during the workshop, by the researcher and a participant, with the aim of developing a rich
description from two different perspectives. Extracts from the wiki were selected to illustrate
approaches to addressing the challenges which the tutors described and their intentions in
providing tuition. Qualitative data drawn from the workshop notes, and email reflective exercise.
was analysed by iterative reading and the identification of common themes. Finally the project
report was posted to the participants with a request for comments, and our thinking has
developed through discussion in a number of seminars on the project.
Findings
Discussion in the workshop was animated and tutors clearly appreciated the opportunity to talk
about their teaching and to share approaches. The introduction of threshold concepts and
troublesome knowledge was successful in encouraging a lively debate on difficult parts of the
curriculum and approaches to supporting students’ learning of critical areas, although during
subsequent discussion and particularly in writing this paper it has emerged that a variety of
factors underlie the challenges which they described.
The following is a reflective account of the teaching of this History course at a distance,
illustrated with quotes from the workshop and contributions to the wiki. The account begins with
illustrations of the main course related challenges which staff reported and goes on to describe
their intentions in terms of what they were trying to achieve as tutors; this data is taken from the
workshop. Finally it gives an account of some of the strategies and interventions which they
used for helping students with these difficulties: this data is taken primarily from the wiki and
email reflective exercise, with some comments derived from the workshop.
Significant or difficult areas of the course
Tutors reported how their students encountered difficulties in understanding certain concepts,
for example, modern day tacit or ritual assumptions about the ‘nation state’ provided inadequate
or less than satisfactory conceptual tools for engaging with the complex territorial and dynastic
situation in fifteenth century England, France or Burgundy. Commenting on the relevance of
Perkins’ ritual knowledge, (knowledge which is routine, meaningless or acquired by rote), tutors
recognised traditional history particularly as taught in schools. Whilst knowledge on chronology
was meaningless when de-coupled from its context, it had its place and could lead to
understanding when linked to a historical context. Furthermore, when students had acquired an
overall understanding of a subject, then it was possible to slot ritual knowledge into its
appropriate place.
Citing Arkwright’s water frame (not Hargreaves) and double patented that looks bloody
impressive. H4
It’s about patterns. I could encounter some rote knowledge and fit it into a pattern. H3
5
Tutors noted that students had encountered conceptually difficult knowledge in the economic
study:
Part of the problem of student fear of data is well known to me as an economic historian
… who has also used data extensively in much of my work and in my teaching. It's not
easy to convey meaning through raw data, however presented - they need to be
explained properly in their historical context just like other sources. H4
While clearly Perkins’ ideas on troublesome knowledge struck a chord with the tutors, many
comments here are also reminiscent of observations on the teaching of History in other
institutions. For example, Anderson & Day’s (2005) study in 13 universities and colleges
describe common “ways of thinking and practising” in History, which are characterised by issues
such as an appreciation of history as socially constructed; or a sensitivity to the strangeness of
the past.
There were issues surrounding the management of students’ expectations of the course, and of
the role of the tutor. Such expectations were inevitably influenced by previous experiences with
other courses and tutors, and popular representations of historical “fact” as presented in the
media, reiterating the significance of context in any discussion about difficult areas of
curriculum.
People have acquired unconsciously daft notions about the past. This leads to huge
misunderstandings. H4
The problem is, the preparation given in 1st level History is nothing like the kind of detail
needed for the students to approach A200. H1
Again, the institutional context of the OU presents particular challenges, since although many
students will follow a prescribed programme of study leading to a named degree, they may also
choose to study any course at any level, and therefore there is no level playing field on which to
build.
These challenges were compounded because the course is resource based. Therefore,
students were required to develop and practise the ability to navigate through an extensive
range of course material, using a variety of media. Tutors felt this was demanding of students in
a second level course.
It is a very complex package, and the choice is overwhelming – course texts, a CD-ROM
with articles, a website. They need to know how much to use when. How to make a
judicious selection. H2
Observations on the difficulties experienced by students in studying a resource based course
reflects other work on the course design which is needed to support students in developing self
direction and a critical approach (Macdonald, 2001).
In summary then, tutors’ perceptions of the difficulties encountered by students were related to
a combination of issues which included an understanding of appropriate ways to study History,
the teaching of certain identifiable historical concepts, the institutional context, and the resource
based nature of the course. Work by Norton et al (2005) measured teachers’ beliefs about
teaching and their intentions in practice, and illustrates the significance of context in influencing
the way in which a subject is taught. Indeed, teachers’ intentions seemed to reflect a
compromise between their conceptions of teaching and the constraints of particular academic
and social contexts: the significance of context is exemplified here in the case of tutors at the
OU.
Tutoring aims and intentions
6
Tutors discussed the need to develop in students an awareness of historical practice through
analysis of a variety of primary sources, addressing critical issues such as bias and reliability,
the fragmentary nature of the historical record, in other words, the episteme of history. Students
needed to understand that studying history at university has less to do with assimilating
information than with engaging with historical problems and scholarly perspectives based on a
range of evidence (historiography). Tutors aim to develop the ability to put these underlying
principles into practice by using information appropriately in essays, supporting an argument
with evidence and illustrative examples.
They need to learn how to use material to create an essay. H3
Sometimes it’s the first time they have studied. They start out thinking “If it’s there it must
be relevant”. They begin to understand what to focus on. H5
They mastered the material, but didn’t know how to make it work for them. H2
There was a lack of understanding of alternative perspectives: ‘I know where I stand on
this!’ H1
The tutors described how they wanted to induct students into an understanding of what it means
to be a historian, resisting a ‘present-minded’ perspective, using history simplistically to explain
the modern world. Tutors had to find ways to awaken students’ “historical imagination”, set
aside everyday ritual knowledge of, for example, religion in our pluralistic secular society, and
empathise with other historical contexts and societies. They wanted to build students’
confidence in working with the weight, complexity and unfamiliarity of alien knowledge
encountered in remote periods.
Describing concepts is not enough. They need to understand what historians are arguing
about. H3
It’s all about analysis, developing the historical imagination of students, to reconstruct
and put things together. How do you cultivate the imagination, so they can see the past?
We are trying to see our way into the minds of people in the past. What religion meant to
them, ideas on authority. H1
We are trying to teach people how to be historians. H5
It requires a leap of understanding: how people related to each other in the medieval
period. H2
There was also a perceived need to guide students and construct links between areas of the
course, and inevitably to inject some enthusiasm and motivation.
We need to motivate them – we need the ability to communicate that enthusiasm. H3
My role is to provide the link between different areas of the course, …. making sense of
what is there. Provide a strategy for survival. H5
I guide them through the narrative. H2
Need to equip them to feel they can do it too! H1
These intentions using verbs such as “equip”, “guide”, “link”, “inspire” reflect the kind of teaching
which tutors were aiming to achieve.
7
Tutoring strategies and interventions
It was the intention to continue with contributions on teaching strategies in the wiki. However, in
contrast to the face-to-face workshop, contributions to the wiki were reluctant. While tutors
recognised the potential for sharing good practice, the use of an online group had a somewhat
lukewarm reception. There were a variety of issues, but perhaps most significantly it appeared
there was no present culture of collaboration and professional community.
“Quite frankly the time factor and the need for continual dialogue if it really is to serve a
way to actually draw out solutions and difficulties.” H5
“How we would get to collaborative teaching and overcoming the way we work from
home remotely, doing our own academic thing and not stepping on each others’ toes is
beyond me…” H1
While teaching communities at the OU are lively on some courses they inevitably depend on the
use of online media, and have been readily adopted where online forums are in use for teaching
purposes. In the case of History, staff probably belong to what Rogers (1995) refers to the “late
majority” in terms of adoption of technology for working practices, and therefore do not have a
long tradition of belonging to online communities.
With this proviso, the wiki did illustrate the potential for sharing teaching strategies online. This
section illustrates an example of a shared intervention on the wiki, building on the initial
workshop. In a discussion about helping students to develop their historical imagination, a new
tutor proposes an approach, to which a second tutor adds his comments:
…[T]o prompt a discussion about the difference between medieval and modern state,
one technique that I have found fruitful, but which is potentially problematic (and may
indeed be anathema to some, from a methodological point of view), is to pose a counterfactual: imagining how the Burgundian state might have developed over the next few
centuries if it had survived. This approach could be distracting and perhaps off-putting to
some students, so I am wary of using it, but it would help to pinpoint some of our
assumptions concerning 'statehood'. ..(H3)
I think this might be useful. I always try and introduce students to the concept of nations
and states and ensure they don't see them as one and the same, linking them to the
geography. (H2)
While the online community in this project was not viable, we firmly believe in its potential for the
sharing of ideas and resources amongst a disparate group of teaching staff, and there is clearly
value for new staff, provided it embraced all staff on a course and was seen as central to
effective tutoring.
Conclusions
This pilot has served to make explicit the aims and intentions of a group of tutors, and presents
some examples of what took place in tutorials. It has identified a number of significant parts of
the course where tutor support is considered important to facilitate student understanding. It has
underlined the complexity in context and its significance in determining what is taught and how.
While a range of issues were uncovered in the discussion of challenges of the course we have
taken the view that the use of troublesome knowledge and threshold concepts was valuable in
inspiring tutors to contribute and to think about the teaching of their course in new ways, and
may well have been instrumental in encouraging them to attend the workshop in the first place.
8
In contrast to generic professional development which might aim to concentrate on tutoring
strategies such as, for example, effective approaches to facilitation, this exercise has modelled
a new approach which begins discussion with the course itself. We summarise the steps here:
Significant or difficult areas of the course
Tutoring aims and intentions
Tutoring strategies
The discussion of teaching intentions and description of tutorial strategies underlines the
challenges in teaching History at a distance and the need to provide a sufficiently interactive
environment to support these aspirations to discuss, inspire, or illustrate adequately, when
facilitating at a distance. It raises difficult issues on the role of the facilitative tutor and their
influence on the learning experience of students.
We have not succeeded in identifying areas of history which might qualify as threshold concepts
in this study, although we were able to identify difficult course specific concepts which may
coincide with definitions of troublesome knowledge. However it is debateable how transferable
these observations would be. We can say that the introduction of these concepts together with
those of troublesome knowledge has opened up a new opportunity to engage with subject
specialists in what has been an inspiring conversation on teaching and learning. As Cousin
(2008) comments:
“An important dimension in the threshold concept perspectives lie in the ways in which it
places subject specialists at the centre of inquiry. ... characteristic of a number of
research projects into threshold concepts is the dialogue they have generated among
subject specialists, students and educationalists.”
(p269)
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