Threshold Concepts: Further up, further in.
Seven years. From the sixth grade to graduating high school, seven years total, I took Spanish. This subject was taken seriously. I wanted to learn! Picturing myself speaking was enticing. However, nearly a year after graduating from high school, I was in Nicaragua for Spring Break. To my dismay, I had forgotten everything. All of those classes, practicing conjugations, translating, speaking, and, most importantly, test-taking – all of this with nothing to show for it. Yes, I had a minimal grasp of the basics. But I was far from fluent.
Could I have tried harder? Maybe. Were there better strategies I could have implemented to become conversational? Certainly. However, I would argue a key reason for this lack of success comes from the values of our American educational system. As a “good” student, I developed a strategy for obtaining what I actually wanted: good test scores. This is not negating personal responsibility to an outside entity. Yes, my focus ought to have been mastery rather than an acceptable grade. However, there is an underlying current of values in the American educational system that I unwittingly flowed along – namely, information regurgitation prioritized over mastery.
Students are conditioned for information regurgitation and dropping. Information is useful for scoring well on a test, and once it has served its purpose, forgotten. We may have more knowledge in our information-saturated world. But we have falsely assumed gaining more information is key to success in education. Dr. Edwin Friedman points out that our society has over-valued data and calls this being “data junkies.”[1] But this information is not critically taken in, reflected upon, and connected with other areas of knowledge. Therefore, what we have is a world of perpetually increasing data, credulous information regurgitation in our dialogue, and a shallow understanding of the world around us.
This is where understanding threshold concepts is key for a better future through education. Unlike utilitarian information regurgitation for test-taking, grasping knowledge as a threshold concept is not forgotten after it is used for a test or paper. Rather, a threshold concept becomes a part of the learner and follows the learner through the rest of his or her educational journey.
A basic example of a threshold concept is babies learning to walk. They stumble, it is difficult, they don’t “get it.” But once they “get it,” a portal to a new world with new possibilities is opened. They become expert walkers. This threshold concept of walking cannot be skipped in order to become a runner. One cannot sidestep division in order to get a head start on calculus. As with a video game requiring mastery of one level in order to advance to the next, one cannot shortcut threshold concepts to progress in one’s educational journey.
When it comes to guiding students along in their educational journey, teachers can often have great difficulty teaching threshold concepts that they intuitively “get,” concepts that are blatantly obvious to them, that it a challenge to remember what their mental models were like before they passed through this portal of a threshold concept. As a pastor, it is critical to keep this in mind when I am preaching biblical concepts that I understand to the core of my being, yet may be like a foreign language to the people I pastor.
Teaching outcomes for a basic grasp of information is easier in the short term. This is why course syllabi possess “learning outcomes.” However, learning for understanding is demanding. That being said, it is far more fulfilling. On the other side of the strain of effort to understand a threshold concept, there is joy in passing through the portal. There is joy in the challenge. And there is joy in discovering the journey is not over. It has just begun. As with a doorway into Narnia, we can go “further up, further in.”[2] Maybe one day I will pass through the doorway into Spanish fluency.
[1] Edwin H. Friedman, A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix (10th Anniversary, Revised Edition) (Church Publishing, Inc., 2017) 103-108.
[2] C. S. Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia. Book 7: The Last Battle (New York: HarperTrophy, 2005) 213.
About the Author
David Beavis
David is Australian by birth, was raised in Southern California, and is the Youth and Young Adults Pastor at B4 Church in Beaverton, Oregon. David and his wife, Laura, live in Hillsboro with their dog, Coava (named after their favorite coffee shop). M.A. Theology - Talbot School of Theology B.A. Psychology - Vanguard University of Southern California7 responses to “Threshold Concepts: Further up, further in.”
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David, This is a very well written blog. I really enjoyed your third paragraph and relate to a society or culture that celebrates performance. I agree with you that learning can be joyful and can relate with your Spanish experience as I studied German. Bless you, I enjoy and look forward to your thoughts and blogs.
David,
Spanish is one of the languages I would love to learn once I am young again! Having some similarities to French, I think I would not have a hard time learning it. Could you have tried heard? I have heard that the best way to learn a language is by immersing oneself in the language and culture. Probably if you had stayed in Nicaragua say for a year or two you would have returned a Spanish expert never to forget the language. My case was a little different I think I was forced to learn survival skills. Besides Kinyarwanda and French, I had a little bit of formal instruction in others, I learned other languages as survival means. It was in 1990 when I got to Uganda that I learned how to ask for food and drinks in Luganda and started to learn some English words so I can communicate with missionaries from the UK and the US hoping to find favor with them and help me go to school. It wasn’t long till I realized my English was much better than my French and Swahili, and I was successful in attracting my first high school sponsor who was a British Missionary in Uganda.
David,
I really enjoyed your post. You have touched here on the great difficulty teachers have delivering content to their students that they themselves find “blatantly obvious”. As a math teacher myself, I can relate to this struggle at times. From time to time I will forget that my students simply cannot see what I see so clearly. And so I try to build “bridges” for them to help them across the thresholds when I can as a teacher.
Excellent ideas shared! Thank you!
David, appreciate you relating threshold concepts to your journey learning Spanish. I’m curious, since the human brain is so good at recognizing patterns, if rote memorization and/or parroting in the context of learning a language can over time lead to the subconscious construction or understanding of threshold concepts. Do you think that if someone were to present you with some introductory threshold concepts for learning Spanish that you would be familiar with some of them?
Hey Caleb,
Honestly, I have not thought about the subconscious grasping of threshold concepts and what these would be in the Spanish language. I believe I would be decently familiar with the introductory Spanish language threshold concepts. But there is familiarity and then there is integrative. I am familiar with proofs in geometry, but this is not something that has been a part of my mental models – not since I was a sophomore in high school that is. The reality is immersion into a context where Spanish is the predominant language spoken is the best way to subconsiously cross the plethora of threshold concepts in order to become fluent in Spanish. Maybe Laura and I should live abroad some time in the future!
Hey David,
Great connection to the education system. I can relate to learning “the system” and getting the grades, while not actually learning the material. Pretty sobering to be in a culture and have a clear view of what you retained. Perhaps, that was a threshold experience in itself. It took being in the culture to give you a glimpse of what you actually needed to learn. I find that I need to have sufficient experience before a concept takes hold. I can’t help but needing to truly know the “why” of the information before it seems to unlock for me. Have you noticed what helps you move into the threshold experience of learning?
As a former teacher I loved reading your correlation to education. I also laughed when you started talking about Spanish Class – it brought back so many fun memories! The only line I learned was “Por favor puedo Ir al baño” because I knew that got me out of class!
Other than that I learned whatever I needed to ace the test and then quickly forgot it.