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I began to humbly question myself, \u201cHave I been practicing threshold concepts for the past 18 months.\u201d When I founded Restore Counseling Center, I thought beyond a mere counseling practice. I wrestled with concepts:<\/p>\n
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- How do we multiply Restore in 22 different areas of the U.S. and 5 places overseas?<\/li>\n
- Where are those places in the U.S. and overseas that have severe emotional, neurological, and sexual trauma? Where are those dark places?<\/li>\n
- We will be known for dealing with areas the Church has struggled to address for centuries.<\/li>\n
- We will hire therapists who once messed up their life, messed up other lives, or who got messed up. Then they took the years to recover, went to school to get their master\u2019s and now want to help others heal just like they did.<\/li>\n
- We will hire research therapists to do research on the toughest issues in our community in order to bring hope and healing to our county. Then we will publish our findings in peer related journals and speak at national and international conferences to share how we as a community are dealing with some of the most painful emotional struggles in our area.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Even my NPO is compelling me to go after the severely broken. Those whom the Church rejects because it\u2019s better to reject them in the name of sin, rather than pursue them and get criticized by the \u201choly.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u00a0The term \u201cthreshold concept\u201d emerged from a 2003 study on higher education in classrooms by Jan Meyer and Ray Land, who sought to define and describe high-quality learning environments. What they found was that in many fields, certain \u2014 and relatively few \u2014 concepts caused a transformative shift in a student\u2019s understanding and appreciation of that field. Meyer and Land named them \u201cthreshold concepts\u201d because once a student understands the concept, the student has permanently crossed into a more profound understanding, one that empowers them to connect prior and new knowledge in more sophisticated ways.<\/p>\n
According to Meyer and Land, mastering a threshold concept requires the learner to enter an uncomfortable space where they must question what they already know, wrestle with abstract ideas, and seek new ways to organize and process information. As I thought about my NPO, I wrestled with the fact that many of my friends would be considered evangelical and therefore may struggle with my NPO. This struggle is what Meyer and Land referred to as \u201ctroublesome to the student.\u201d (Meyer, 158). This is why the very first sentence of Meyer and Land\u2019s book is profound, \u201cA threshold concept can be considered as akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something.\u201d (Meyer, 3). Have I been going through a portal and not even realize it? Do I have what it takes to go through this type of portal? Have I gone through other portals in my life and not been aware of it?<\/p>\n
One week ago, I was discouraged by the concept of threshold concepts and this week, I could not get enough of it. It is causing me to think deeply about my calling and giving me the courage to gracefully and intentionally keep moving forward.<\/p>\n
Overcoming Student Barrier to Student Understanding:\u00a0 Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge.<\/em> (London, UK: Routledge, 2012), 3. https:\/\/georgefox.idm.oclc.org\/login?url=https:\/\/www.taylorfrancis.com\/books\/9780203966273<\/p>\n
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One week ago I started my inspectional reading of Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge by Jan H. F. Meyer and Ray Land. After 46 pages I was negatively asking, \u201cWhat in the world is this book about?\u201d In discouragement I placed the book down and was not looking forward to this post. I even thought, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":176,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2545],"class_list":["post-30461","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp02meyer","cohort-dlgp02"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30461","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30461"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30479,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30461\/revisions\/30479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}