Threshold Concepts, Ten Years On
It has been a decade since threshold concepts swept through information-literacy circles, and the framework that grew out of them is now old enough to be questioned by the people it trained. That is healthy. A good idea should be able to survive its own middle age.
The appeal was always obvious. Instead of a checklist of skills, threshold concepts gave us a map of the troublesome, transformative ideas a learner has to pass through to think like a researcher. The notion that authority is constructed and contextual, for instance, is not a fact to memorise but a doorway to walk through, and like any doorway it can be uncomfortable on the way.
Ten years on, my reservation is a practical one. Frameworks are easy to cite and hard to teach. A fifty-minute session does not transform anyone, and we do students a disservice if we pretend it does. What the framework gave me, in the end, was not a lesson plan but a kind of patience. Thresholds are crossed slowly, in their own time, long after the librarian has left the room. Our job is to hold the door open and resist the urge to shove.
Comments are closed.
