Crossing Thresholds: Identifying conceptual transitions in postsecondary teaching
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In this paper we report on research we conducted to begin the process of identifying threshold concepts in the field of postsecondary teaching. Meyer & Land (2006) propose that within all disciplinary fields there seem to be particular threshold concepts that serve as gateways, opening up new and previously inaccessible ways of thinking and practicing. We developed a series of questions focusing on the “troublesome” and “transformative” characteristics of threshold concepts and asked these questions of several constituent groups, including those who are new to practice and the body of knowledge in postsecondary teaching and those who are already knowledgeable and/or experienced in the field. Based on our interpretation of participants’ responses, we identified four recognized concepts in the field of postsecondary teaching as potential threshold concepts in this field: Assessment for/as learning; Learning-centred teaching; Accommodation for diversity; and, Context-driven practice. Our findings suggest that threshold concepts are relevant to the field of postsecondary teaching. Through this work, we hope to help educational developers and faculty members consider what is involved in learning to teach and developing teaching expertise, and to encourage critical discussion about the teaching development “curriculum” in postsecondary settings. Threshold concepts arise as a field develops and are defined as practitioners and scholars in the field define their field. At this stage, we believe the real value of threshold concepts for postsecondary teaching lies in the discussion that arises in the process of identifying and naming the concepts. Cet article se penche sur le développement de l’enseignement post-secondaire à partir des concepts de seuil. Meyer et Land (2006) suggèrent qu’au sein de tous les champs disciplinaires, il semble y avoir des concepts particuliers qui servent de passerelles et qui ouvrent la voie à de nouvelles manières de penser et de pratiquer jusque là inaccessibles. Les concepts de seuil représentent une manière transformée de comprendre ou de regarder les choses, sans laquelle l’apprenant ne peut pas progresser dans ce champ. Cette vision transformée peut refléter les valeurs de la discipline ou encore résumer la manière dont les experts dans cette discipline abordent les problèmes. Dans cet article, nous présentons un rapport sur notre tentative d’identifier les concepts de seuil en enseignement post-secondaire. Grâce à ces travaux, nous espérons faire avancer les connaissances en enseignement et en apprentissage et aider les conseillers pédagogiques et les professeurs d’université à prendre en considération ce qui est impliqué dans l’apprentissage de l’enseignement. Nous souhaitons également encourager la discussion critique sur la préparation des programmes d’études de l’enseignement et montrer comment s’y prendre pour aider les autres à apprendre comment enseigner dans un milieu post-secondaire. Nous sommes impatients de partager nos résultats préliminaires et espérons engager d’autres personnes dans ce processus d’identification.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.035 | 0.013 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.027 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.003 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; both teacher heads agree on what is shown here.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".