Freshmen Year: A Threshold Concept
It was the second quarter of my first year; I sat in Dr. Wonil Kim’s Old Testament class and thought the earth would open up and swallow him up for the heresy he was teaching. I could not sit through the 2-hour class that day; I felt that merely sitting there would make me an accomplice or participant in the craziness he was teaching. I returned to my room, wondering how an Adventist College could allow their teachers to teach some of the concepts I had heard in his class that day. How dare he ask us if we thought the flood story was real or exclusive to Christianity? Insinuate that God had made a deal with the devil, and Job was the one caught in the crossfire of that bet? As you read this, I can imagine you, too, feel a certain way about what you’re reading; imagine sitting there and hearing it first-hand.
I am a 4th generation Seventh Day Adventist whose father is a pastor and who was raised in the mission field in Central America. I left this country when I was five and returned when I was 15. As a religion, we are by nature conservative; now imagine growing up in a Latin, ultra-conservative setting where I was not even allowed to wear pants because church members thought I would cause men to sin, was not allowed to preach or speak out of turn. Now, I found myself back in the U.S., in a culture that was nothing like the one I had grown up in.
I had been taught that the word of God was without errors, that God was perfect, did not make mistakes, and that everything He did was for our good. Moreover, here I sat in a class with a professor who, from my initial assessment, was insinuating everything I had learned was a lie. I dropped the class that quarter because the idea that everything I had learned was wrong shook me to my core. Two years later, when I switched majors and became a Theology student, who became my advisor?! Dr. Kim! There was no escaping his classes or him, so this time around, there was no hiding or running; I would have to sit through all the classes, pass them, and hope I learned something.
Meyer and Land, in their book Understanding Barriers to Student Understanding, introduce the concept of Threshold Concepts. They explain these as core ideas that, once understood, transform one’s knowledge of a subject. They are hard to understand and accept at first, but they are crucial to a deeper learning experience. I would experience this without knowing it at the time in Dr. Wonil Kim’s class.
Threshold Concepts can challenge you and be barriers or obstacles you must work hard to overcome. Meyer and Land believe that Threshold Concepts can change how we approach and even understand certain subjects, and they help us identify these obstacles in hopes of overcoming them. While I did not have Meyer and Land’s book in college, it would have been helpful my first year as I was trying to navigate and break specific subject barriers.
Habits are hard to break, and learned things are hard to unlearn, but I am living proof that they are not impossible. Evolution of the mind and unlearning what you have learned is possible! Had I not challenged myself to sit through Dr. Kim’s class, I would have never been challenged to ask specific questions or be open to understanding what he was trying to accomplish by asking frightening and big biblical questions to naïve, 18-year-old first-year college students. Unbeknownst to him, Dr. Kim was applying some of the teaching strategies that Meyer and Land suggested in their book. He provided a safe space for us to ask questions and confront the material, and he created and fostered a learning environment that was very different from what most of us SDA kids had been accustomed to.
By the time I graduated from La Sierra University with a Theology Degree, I had taken eight classes in 2 years from Dr. Kim. He awoke a curiosity in me, a passion towards seeing the Bible not as a book with rules, regulations, and sad stories, but he helped me understand that God is a God of justice who fights for His people; he is a God that calls us to take care of the widow, the poor, the orphan and illegal alien. A God that is, has been and will be—one whose love, mercy, and wrath for His people have a purpose and a time. I am who I am today as a pastor, thanks to Dr. Kim’s approach to teaching.
Some of the teaching strategies that I also found helpful from the reading were:
Pedagogical Approaches: The authors believe that effective teaching requires recognizing and addressing students’ learning barriers. Meyer and Land emphasize the importance of creating earning activities that help students overcome difficult concepts. They believe that teaching should focus more on helping students understand these threshold concepts, providing information at a speed they can digest.
Feedback and Formative Assessment: Feedback is crucial in helping students understand whether they have conquered a threshold concept. Formative assessments can provide a deeper understanding for students and aid in identifying their subject struggles.
Learning new concepts, ways of reading and writing is not easy at 42 years old, but if I am to trust Meyer and Land, as I trusted Dr. Kim so many years ago, then perhaps what awaits me on the other end is a beautiful new way of understanding new concepts, subjects, ideas and ways of learning. This concept can also be applied to how we interact with people, relate to them, and react to their different ideas. Are we open or closed off, and does that prevent us from fully understanding and embracing others?
About the Author
Linda Mendez
11 responses to “Freshmen Year: A Threshold Concept”
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Linda, thank you for sharing. Although initially unexpected, Dr. Kim was integral to your education and personal development, transforming you as a person and pastor. That change is extreme in beauty and mystery and is Christ-centered. I am curious to understand how that change influenced you in those two years when you first met Dr. Kim to realize that all roads to graduation led through Dr. Kim. What did you do personally or through a support team? Or was it a combination of understanding and maturity that ultimately you would need to cross that threshold regardless? I know what those 2 years developmentally meant to me in college.
This is a wonderful witness for others. Thank you.
Michael, I think it was a mixture of maturity and God’s work in me. While I had some trouble accepting some his statements, I was much more open to finding out what he meant by them. I discovered that on most days, he was trying to create shock value in us to motivate us to ask the questions we are usually taught not to ask; Once I understood that, my approach to it all changed and I appreciated what he was trying to do in us.
I would like to meet Dr Kim. He is clearly a teacher who has mastered the art of helping students become curious in a safe environment. That’s an art and one I reflect on often as I teach my students.
Thank you, Linda, for your honesty and articulation of your learning process that set the foundation for this learning chapter.
Betsy,
I would love to take a class from you, from the little I saw in D.C., I can see you like to push people to think outside the box and in learning, I think thats a great tool.
Linda, your story perfectly exemplifies Meyer and Land’s “Threshold Concepts.” I can imagine that it would be completely disorienting to be a long-time disciple walking into what would seem to be a familiar space (Bible class) and be confronted with troublesome knowledge. I am curious – what did the professor do to help you to feel it was a safe learning environment after all? How long did the discomfort last?
Mika,
Once I gave him another chance, I realized that what he was doing was trying to get us uncomfortable enough with the text that we would be forced to look for ourselves and really decide what we believed and who we were pledging our lives to. I think he knew that most of us had been raised just believing what we were told about the things we read, once I understood that, I appreciated what he was doing. There was no question that we asked that he made us feel dumb enough for asking and he made sure to allow us the time needed to process our doubts and questions.
Linda, great reflection. Of late I have been thinking about comfronting existing mindsets that I hold on a wide range of topics and I like the idea of “safe space”. Perhaps we should also create these “safe spaces” for and within ourselves to enable new knowledges and ideas on different topics?
Alex,
Seems like if we were as forgiving with ourselves as we are with others, and allowed ourselves to find doubt within ourselves, it would propel us towards growth and finding the answers within ourselves that we are to afraid to ask or know the answers to. I am with you, we should be our own safe space!
Thanks Linda! Here’s to creating our own safe spaces!
Linda, I can relate to your story! I grew up in a small, urban, Pentecostal church with some conservitive and weird teachings. When I became a teenager, I would latch on to anything that showed the Bible or God to be more approachable and in context of my life on the planet. It was at this time I read about Noah’s flood being merely a flooding of the Near East region. I rolled my eyes at those humanistic teachers who did not know God- Until I realized they did know God and were church leaders. My rebelliousness of the time pushed me to seek out this mysterious new knowledge that made my black and white thinking Mom squirm and give up on me. It was through the years of college and life that curiosity kept me pushing in to the mystery of God. In open mindedness and desire to know God, Jesus and Spirit I was left in a vast, overwhelming dark place. But it was in that liminal space that God showed up and kept drawing me into his vastness and mystery. A place where Jesus was present and the Holy Spirit swirled. It was the Godhead that held my hand through and continues to change me.
In our reading I held onto the ideas the these liminal places are not just cognitive, but include our social, emotional, and psychological capital. I would add spiritual as well. Learning and transformation is holistic!
Jess,
It’s great to know I wasn’t alone. Searching for the truth can be so freeing but the journey can feel very lonely when you feel you are disappointing people that have had a big part in making you who you are.
I 100% agree with you that learning is a holistic process, every aspect of it leads to healing in some way. Spiritual learning for sure has the greatest transformation and healing for our lives.