Why are we here?

David Riley

The threshold concept phenomenon is intriguing and yet disturbing. On the one hand, we see threshold concepts have immediate appeal to our university and NHS staff taking STEMM-oriented MEd programmes. On the other hand, we find staff with a humanities-orientation can grow with, rather than grow out of, threshold concepts over years of reading and reflection. Ambiguities of the threshold metaphor seem to play a part in this, as do its detachment and promiscuity: its easy cohabitation with diverse commitments and perspectives – from learning to development, from the collective to the individual, from disciplines to vocations, from knowledge to affect or identity, from pathways and journeys to spaces, domains, levels, structures and stages, to liquids and flow. Is all this imaginable because batteries aren’t included? By being here, is it us who provide threshold concepts with life, energy and perpetual motion.