Christine Bohlander
The strength of Threshold Concepts is their breadth of applications due to their discipline-specific nature. However, the framework does not take into account how individual students navigate and negotiate cultural contested spaces. My ethnographic research of a small cohort of German theology students in Jerusalem brought to light that in disciplines where long-held world views or beliefs are fostered and which have an affective dimension (Timmermans, Rattray), the focus must be more on learners’ individual experiences and development rather than on teachers imposing thresholds that students must pass (Rowbottom, Loughlin & Heading). It could be argued that it is impossible to identify generic thresholds such as critical thinking in theology, given that students come from different entry-points before being exposed to the curriculum and might have already passed certain thresholds. Regardless of whether threshold concepts have been defined or not, the curriculum provides a lens, or different lenses, for students to make sense of their extra-curricular experiences. This experience and learning cannot be isolated from the particular socially constructed space where it takes place. This could, for example, encompass a culture, group or community of which learners are members. This will become the liminal space on the journey towards a portal that might not be predefined by teachers but rather negotiated by the students themselves. Once this portal is crossed, students might navigate into different, sometimes opposite directions as was the case in my research. Presuming that there is student variation in the preliminal, liminal and postliminal stages, can threshold concepts still serve as a framework that informs curriculum design? I argue that an analysis of individual journeys and the specific learning context makes the student voice more explicit in the definition of threshold concepts.
Threshold Concepts 