The UTM Working Group on Threshold Knowledge in University Pedagogy emerged from a playful yet thought-provoking idea: what if we explored metaphors for threshold concepts (TCs) in learning? In 2022, Mark Blaauw-Hara's "goofy idea" sparked a collaboration with Sheliza Ibrahim, Chris Eaton, Sarah Seeley, and David Gerstle, resulting in an article published in Currents in Teaching and Learning (accessible here). In 2023, membership grew, and in 2024, we became an official UTM Working Group, supported by the Office of the Vice-Principal, Research.
Since then, our working group has evolved into an interdisciplinary space for scholars from Writing Studies, Anthropology, Math, Linguistics, Computer Science, and Library Information Science. We operate with a flexible, rotating membership model, recognizing that academic commitments shift over time. For information on rotating chairs and membership, please see the 'Meet Our Team' page.
Our Aims
The broad aim of our working group is to establish a hub of reflection and research that reimagines undergraduate students’ learning experiences through the lens of threshold concepts. The idea of threshold concepts was first proposed by educational researchers Jan Meyer and Ray Land (Meyer & Land 2003) as conceptual gateways that lead to new ways of understanding or interpreting core concepts in a discipline. Threshold concepts have been characterized as initially troublesome – the knowledge is not easily integrated – but ultimately transformative, irreversible, and crucial for further learning and full participation within a discipline. For an introduction to threshold concepts, check out our "What are Threshold Concepts" page and the video clips we've suggested.
The research interests that guide our group are the identification of threshold concepts within and across disciplines; curricular design based on threshold concepts; and the direct teaching and learning of threshold concepts to students.
Threshold concepts integrate seamlessly with the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL). One reason is that although specific disciplines have their own threshold concepts, the larger threshold concept framework is cross-disciplinary. For example, scholarship addressing threshold concepts has focused on literary study (Corrigan 2019), women and gender studies (Hassel and Launius 2017), problem-solving skills (Wismath, Orr, and MacKay 2015), and scholarship has explored how threshold concepts can support critical thinking and reflection (McLean 2009), educational leadership (Webb and Tierney 2020), undergraduate business communication (Getchell and Lentz 2020), computer programming education (Kallia 2020), and much more. Threshold concepts are learner-focused: Meyer and Land have argued from the start that threshold concepts can help faculty members design curricula that are focused, transparent, and accessible for students.