It has long been a matter of concern to teachers in higher education why certain students ‘get stuck’ at particular points in the curriculum whilst others grasp concepts with comparative ease. What accounts for this variation in student performance and, more importantly, how can teachers change their teaching and courses to help students overcome such barriers?
This book examines the difficulties of student learning and offers advice on how to overcome them through course design, assessment practice and teaching methods. It also provides innovative case material from a wide range of institutions and disciplines, including the social sciences, the humanities, the sciences and economics.
Foreword: Dr Liz Beaty, Director of Learning and Teaching, Higher Education
Funding Council for England (HEFCE)
Page
Ray Land and Jan Meyer
Introduction
1
Section I:
Towards a Theoretical Framework
Chapter 1
Jan Meyer and Ray Land
Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: an introduction
Chapter 2
Jan Meyer and Ray Land
Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: issues of liminality
Chapter 3
David Perkins
Constructivism and troublesome knowledge
Chapter 4
Anastasia Efklides
Metacognition, affect and conceptual difficulty
Chapter 5
Peter Davies
Threshold concepts: how can we recognise them?
Section II:
Threshold Concepts in Practice
Chapter 6
Charlotte Taylor
Threshold concepts in Biology – do they fit the definition?
Chapter 7
Martin Shanahan and
Jan Meyer
The troublesome nature of a threshold concept in Economics
Chapter 8
Nicola Reimann and
Ian Jackson
Threshold concepts in Economics - a case study
Chapter 9
Glynis Cousin
Threshold concepts, troublesome knowledge and emotional capital: an exploration into learning about others
Chapter 10
Ursula Lucas and
Rosina Mladenovic
Threshold concepts in Introductory Accounting
Chapter 11
Maggi Savin-Baden
Disjunction as a form of troublesome knowledge in problem-based learning
Chapter 12
Jenny Booth
On the mastery of philosophical concepts: Socratic discourse and the unexpected ‘affect’
Chapter 13
Simon Bishop
Using analogy in science teaching as a bridge to students’ understanding of complex issues
Conclusion
Chapter 14
Ray Land, Glynis Cousin, Jan Meyer and Peter Davies
Implications of threshold concepts for curriculum design and evaluation
Biography
Jan Meyer is Professor of Education and foundation Director of the Centre for Learning, Teaching, and Research in Higher Education, University of Durham.
Ray Land is Professor of Higher Education Development and Director, Centre for Higher Education Development, Coventry University. Education in Cyberspace , He has written widely on higher education, and his books include Education and Cyberspace (RoutledgeFalmer, 2004) and Educational Development: Discourse, Identity and Practice (SRHE/McGraw-Hill Open University Press, 2004).
