Threshold Concepts in Problem-based Learning

Threshold Concepts in Problem-based Learning
Author: Maggi Savin-Baden
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 194
Release: 2019-02-26
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9004375120

Threshold Concepts in Problem-based Learning provides a critical discussion and guidance for educational researchers, teachers, innovators and policy makers wanting to explore the interrelationship of PBL and threshold concepts. Beginning with an introduction to both areas and offering an overview of the current issues, this volume delivers 11 innovative, research-based chapters from around the world. It outlines the major threshold concepts faced by those disciplines that have adopted PBL, and then examines the impact of threshold concepts on student learning. What is unique about this text is the way it examines PBL as a pedagogy in which students get stuck in the learning process and the thresholds they encounter as they learn to adapt.

Threshold Concepts in Problem-based Learning

Threshold Concepts in Problem-based Learning
Author: Maggi Savin-Baden
Publisher: Brill
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2018
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9789004375116

Threshold concepts and problem-based learning / Maggi Savin-Baden and Gemma Tombs -- The liminal tunnel / Angelica Fredholm and Charlotte Silen -- Critical thinking threshold concepts in PBL / Wdai-Ling Chen and Julie Rattray -- PBL as learning vehicle, threshold concept or capability? : audio-diary research in medical education / Hilary Neve, Kerry Gilbert and Helen Lloyd -- Defined and enacted threshold concepts in engineering education : applied competencies within multi-level systems / Andrea Gomoll, Krista Glazewski, Cindy E. Hmelo-Silver, Thomas Brush and Jiyoon Jung -- Threshold concepts in chemical engineering design / Ashleigh Fletcher and Stuart Boon -- Helping university teachers embrace threshold concepts in scholarly teaching using a problem-based learning approach / Sarah L. Bunnell and Daniel J. Bernstein -- PBL revisited : expectations and experiences : a threshold concept perspective on the facilitator role in PBL / Leif M. Hokstad and Borge Lillebo -- Empathy and problem-based learning / Jayne Lewis -- Threshold concepts in leadership development / Ruth Pearce -- Troublesome and transformative : exploring conceptual threshold crossings in doctoral projects engaged with real world problems in professional practice / Gina Wisker -- Conclusion / Maggi Savin-Baden and Gemma Tombs

Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding

Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding
Author: Jan Meyer
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 258
Release: 2006-09-27
Genre: Education
ISBN: 113418994X

It has long been a matter of concern to teachers in higher education why certain students ‘get stuck’ at particular points in the curriculum whilst others grasp concepts with comparative ease. What accounts for this variation in student performance and, more importantly, how can teachers change their teaching and courses to help students overcome such barriers? This book examines the difficulties of student learning and offers advice on how to overcome them through course design, assessment practice and teaching methods. It also provides innovative case material from a wide range of institutions and disciplines, including the social sciences, the humanities, the sciences and economics.

Threshold Concepts and Transformational Learning

Threshold Concepts and Transformational Learning
Author:
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 490
Release: 2010-01-01
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9460912079

Over the last decade the notion of ‘threshold concepts’ has proved influential around the world as a powerful means of exploring and discussing the key points of transformation that students experience in their higher education courses and the ‘troublesome knowledge’ that these often present.

Threshold Concepts Within the Disciplines

Threshold Concepts Within the Disciplines
Author: Ray Land
Publisher: Brill / Sense
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2008
Genre: Education
ISBN:

Threshold Concepts within the Disciplines brings together leading writers from various disciplines and national contexts in an important and readable volume for all those concerned with teaching and learning in higher education. The foundational principle of threshold concepts is that there are, in each discipline, 'conceptual gateways' or 'portals' that must be negotiated to arrive at important new understandings. In crossing the portal, transformation occurs, both in knowledge and subjectivity. Such transformation involves troublesome knowledge, a key concern for contributors to this book, who identify threshold concepts in their own fields and suggest how to deal with them. Part One extends and enhances the threshold concept framework, containing chapters that articulate its qualities, its links to other social theories of learning and other traditions in educational research. Part Two encompasses the disciplinary heart of the book with contributions from a diversity of areas including computing, engineering, biology, design, modern languages, education and economics. In the many empirical case studies educators show how they have used the threshold concept framework to inform and evaluate their teaching contexts. Other chapters emphasise the equally important 'being and becoming' dimension of learning. Part Three suggests pedagogic directions for those at the centre of the education project with contributions focusing on the socialisation of academics and their continuing quest to be effective teachers. The book will be of interest to disciplinary teachers, educational researchers and educational developers. It also is of relevance to issues in quality assurance and professional accreditation.

Threshold Concepts in Practice

Threshold Concepts in Practice
Author: Ray Land
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 381
Release: 2016-07-09
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9463005129

"Threshold Concepts in Practice brings together fifty researchers from sixteen countries and a wide variety of disciplines to analyse their teaching practice, and the learning experiences of their students, through the lens of the Threshold Concepts Framework. In any discipline, there are certain concepts – the ‘jewels in the curriculum’ – whose acquisition is akin to passing through a portal. Learners enter new conceptual (and often affective) territory. Previously inaccessible ways of thinking or practising come into view, without which they cannot progress, and which offer a transformed internal view of subject landscape, or even world view. These conceptual gateways are integrative, exposing the previously hidden interrelatedness of ideas, and are irreversible. However they frequently present troublesome knowledge and are often points at which students become stuck. Difficulty in understanding may leave the learner in a ‘liminal’ state of transition, a ‘betwixt and between’ space of knowing and not knowing, where understanding can approximate to a form of mimicry. Learners navigating such spaces report a sense of uncertainty, ambiguity, paradox, anxiety, even chaos. The liminal space may equally be one of awe and wonderment. Thresholds research identifies these spaces as key transformational points, crucial to the learner’s development but where they can oscillate and remain for considerable periods. These spaces require not only conceptual but ontological and discursive shifts. This volume, the fourth in a tetralogy on Threshold Concepts, discusses student experiences, and the curriculum interventions of their teachers, in a range of disciplines and professional practices including medicine, law, engineering, architecture and military education. Cover image: Detail from ‘Eve offering the apple to Adam in the Garden of Eden and the serpent’ c.1520–25. Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553). Bridgeman Images. All rights reserved.

Threshold Concepts on the Edge

Threshold Concepts on the Edge
Author: Julie A. Timmermans
Publisher: BRILL
Total Pages: 402
Release: 2019-12-30
Genre: Education
ISBN: 9004419977

Threshold Concepts on the Edge explores new directions in threshold concept research and practice and is of relevance to teachers, learners, educational researchers and academic developers.

Naming What We Know

Naming What We Know
Author: Linda Adler-Kassner
Publisher: University Press of Colorado
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2015-06-15
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0874219906

Naming What We Know examines the core principles of knowledge in the discipline of writing studies using the lens of “threshold concepts”—concepts that are critical for epistemological participation in a discipline. The first part of the book defines and describes thirty-seven threshold concepts of the discipline in entries written by some of the field’s most active researchers and teachers, all of whom participated in a collaborative wiki discussion guided by the editors. These entries are clear and accessible, written for an audience of writing scholars, students, and colleagues in other disciplines and policy makers outside the academy. Contributors describe the conceptual background of the field and the principles that run throughout practice, whether in research, teaching, assessment, or public work around writing. Chapters in the second part of the book describe the benefits and challenges of using threshold concepts in specific sites—first-year writing programs, WAC/WID programs, writing centers, writing majors—and for professional development to present this framework in action. Naming What We Know opens a dialogue about the concepts that writing scholars and teachers agree are critical and about why those concepts should and do matter to people outside the field.

Interactional Research Into Problem-Based Learning

Interactional Research Into Problem-Based Learning
Author: Susan M. Bridges
Publisher: Purdue University Press
Total Pages: 260
Release: 2020-08-15
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1612495869

Problem-based learning (PBL) has been deployed as a student-centered instructional approach and curriculum design in a wide range of academic fields across the world. The majority of educational research to date has focused on knowledge-based outcomes addressing why PBL is useful. Researchers of PBL are developing a growing interest in qualitative research with a process-driven orientation to examining learning interactions. It is essential to broaden this research base so as to support PBL designs and approaches to leading students into higher-order thinking and a deeper approach to learning. Interactional Research Into Problem-Based Learning explores how students learn in an inquiry-led approach such as PBL. Included are studies that focus on learning in situ and go beyond measuring the outcomes of PBL. The goal is to further expand the PBL research base of qualitative investigations examining the social dimension and lived experience of teaching and learning within the PBL process. A second aim of this volume is to shed light on the methodological aspects of researching PBL, adding new perspectives to the current trends in qualitative studies on PBL. Chapters cover ethnographic approaches to video analysis, introspective protocols such as stimulated recall, and longitudinal qualitative studies using discourse-based analytic approaches. Specifically, this book will further contribute to the current educational research both theoretically and empirically in the following key areas: students’ learning processes in PBL over time and across contexts; the nature of quality interactions in PBL tutorials; the (inter)cultural aspects of learning in PBL; facilitation processes and group dynamics in synchronous and asynchronous face-to-face and blended PBL; and the developing nature of PBL learner identity.

Rethinking Problem-based Learning for the Digital Age

Rethinking Problem-based Learning for the Digital Age
Author: Maggi Savin-Baden
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
Total Pages: 156
Release: 2023-10-19
Genre: Education
ISBN: 1000959899

Rethinking Problem-based Learning for the Digital Age provides grounded, evidence-based strategies for teaching faculty, academic developers and educational technologists who are changing their problem-based learning (PBL) modules and programmes from face-to-face to online. Given today’s rapid advancements in learning and curriculum development specific to online and blended modes, there is considerable potential to introduce new forms of PBL in higher education. This book applies fundamental and cutting-edge research, including original scholarship by the authors, to innovative PBL practices and realistic tasks that can be brought to life through digital environments, teamwork and resources. Whether re-contextualizing PBL practices for newly online/blended instruction or seeking fresh PBL approaches for existing digital education environments across disciplines, readers will be guided to construct active, highly motivating, learner-centred experiences using simulations, games, virtual reality, multimedia and other complex innovations.