{"id":35296,"date":"2024-01-26T13:07:20","date_gmt":"2024-01-26T21:07:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/?p=35296"},"modified":"2024-01-26T13:07:20","modified_gmt":"2024-01-26T21:07:20","slug":"exploring-transformative-leadership-through-threshold-concepts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/exploring-transformative-leadership-through-threshold-concepts\/","title":{"rendered":"Exploring Transformative Leadership through Threshold Concepts"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reflecting on insights from this week’s exploration of threshold concept theory I\u2019ve come to understand threshold concepts as “aha” moments or paradigm shifts that allow so many other things within a discipline, field, or practice to \u201cclick\u201d, come together, and\/or make sense in the mind of the learner. A threshold concept becomes a lens through which we see the world. Once we\u2019ve been shown this new way of seeing, there is no going back \u2013 we cannot simply unsee things from this standpoint but rather can now make sense of so much more about a field\/ subject by understanding certain threshold concepts about it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201c Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding\u201d and “Threshold Concepts in Practice” provide an in-depth examination of threshold concepts and their implications on education to explore how we teach and learn. The authors define threshold concepts as transformative, irreversible, integrative, and often troublesome understandings that fundamentally change the learner’s perspective,[1]\u00a0 noting that threshold concepts are akin to a portal, opening up the world in new and previously inaccessible ways.[2]<\/span><\/p>\n

At the core of this framework is the argument that students need to be \u201ctroubled\u201d and experience knowledge that disrupts their earlier way(s) of thinking.[3]Threshold concepts place an emphasis on affect, disposition, and identity. There are three core ways they influence our education: 1) through providing an opportunity to understand one’s stuckness ( ie. why difficulty to learning may arise, the nature of a learner’s \u201ctroublesomeness,\u201d and ways to talk about the conceptual encounters that we all will experience ), 2) by being something to help sequence learning, shape programming, and design curriculum, and 3) as a research tool that allows us to further deepen our knowledge of issues still needing additional investigation as it relates to the scholarship of learning.[4]\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In general, there is no one-size-fits-all way of understanding how we learn however, threshold concepts aim to be another helpful lens to add to our learning toolkit. Reflecting on my own learning experiences and even more so on my leadership practice and the foundational values it\u2019s been built on, I was surprised to find threshold concepts at play in so many ways. Being that I’m in a field focused on adult education, it’s a bit embarrassing to admit that I’m not already well-versed in the terminology of threshold concepts. However, despite not being well versed in the concept itself,\u00a0 I do know and actively relate to many threshold concepts within my field, I simply didn’t know that they were called threshold concepts until now. In that way, threshold concepts are their own threshold concept for me. Doing this week’s assignment opened me up to this new lens that\u2019s prompted a deeper dive into all I think I intuitively know about leadership.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So much of my learning journey has involved that which is experiential and organic, shaped by the Spirit’s leading and adopted through mentorship,\u00a0 rather than gained through personal study of academic theories. That said, I now can\u2019t stop uncovering threshold moments in my life. While they go all the way back to my childhood, I\u2019d like to take a moment to focus on a few related to transformative leadership.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I\u2019ll never forget the day I was invited to see leadership as a practice. I had previously thought of leadership as a role or title or some power bestowed upon an individual, rather than seeing it as something to be learned and applied in praxis.\u00a0 For someone who had previously only thought leadership was about being a CEO or charismatically commanding a big stage, it was an idea that challenged so much of my identity. Despite at first taking some time to truly adopt this concept, once I fully saw leadership in practice it was liberating and everything I did from then on out was influenced by this concept.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

As I grew in my leadership journey and began working with organizations \u2013 both as staff and as an external coach\/consultant, I was quickly introduced to adaptive leadership. At the time I didn’t see it as a threshold concept but it was. Adaptive leadership challenged me and the teams I worked with to move away from the status quo of simply replicating what\u2019s been done in the past and instead embrace the volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity of the world we live in by adopting new methods of operation that focus on continual learning, taking each experience into account when new challenges arise.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Another powerful threshold concept in my life has been that of power dynamics. I remember first learning about this in my undergraduate studies where we focused on power dynamics related to race, class, and gender. That new lens opened up a new way of looking at the world and provided language to understand experiences I had been through or saw others go through.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

With so much of my professional life being focused on supporting organizations working cross-culturally I\u2019ve found these two concepts to be vital for addressing some of the larger challenges faced when working to create a more socially just world. There\u2019s something called the nonprofit paradox ( another concept that transformed the way I\u00a0 operate) which says that\u00a0 \u201cNonprofits tend to recreate within their own organizational cultures the problems they are trying to solve in society.\u201d [5]\u00a0 Educating leaders within these mission-driven organizations to understand these concepts and adopt practices that leverage the new insight isn’t always easy. I often find that while an individual leader might have a big \u2018aha\u2019 moment upon being introduced to these concepts, they remain clueless when it comes to practical ways for implementation.\u00a0 Or, as the nonprofit paradox describes, they cannot see how these concepts relate to them and their work since their admirable dedication to certain values often leaves them blind to their own faults. \u00a0I too have experienced this blindness firsthand in building my company and having to really examine if the internal systems and structures were in alignment with our core values and beliefs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Overall, threshold concept theories can be applied to so many aspects of life. One can argue that the books we read don\u2019t give enough insight into practical application for a larger variety of learning situations however this is a task I am excited to explore moving forward as it relates to my own growth as a leader, personally, professionally, and academically.<\/span><\/p>\n

[1]Land, Ray, Jan Meyer, and Michael Flanagan. <\/span>Threshold Concepts in Practice.<\/span><\/i> Sense Publishers, 2016.<\/span><\/p>\n

[2] Meyer, Jan H.F., and Ray Land. Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge.<\/em> New York: Routledge, 2006.<\/span><\/p>\n

[3]Ibid<\/span><\/p>\n

[4]Center for Engaged Learning. (2019, March 19), Ray Land on Threshold Concepts, Accessed on January 23, 2024,\u00a0 Retrieved from www.youtube.com\/watch?v=kiNQAWFzULE.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

[5]<\/span>Piana, David La. \u201cThe Nonprofit Paradox.\u201d <\/span>Stanford Social Innovation Review<\/span><\/i> 8, no. 3 (2010): 23\u201324. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.48558\/8S4M-MN24.<\/span><\/p>\n

Please note that this article was also written with the support of AI, utilizing the specific prompts suggested in the “DLDR Substantive Weekly Blog Post and Asynchronous Conversation” as a base for personal inquiry that birthed the following additional prompt: \u201c<\/span>Could you provide more concrete examples and practical strategies for implementing threshold concepts in leadership development?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reflecting on insights from this week’s exploration of threshold concept theory I\u2019ve come to understand threshold concepts as “aha” moments or paradigm shifts that allow so many other things within a discipline, field, or practice to \u201cclick\u201d, come together, and\/or make sense in the mind of the learner. A threshold concept becomes a lens through […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":209,"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":[2967,1429],"class_list":["post-35296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dlgp03","tag-meyer","cohort-dlgp03"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35296","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\/209"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35296"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35298,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35296\/revisions\/35298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}