What Decoding The Disciplines Can Offer Threshold Concepts

Shopkow, Leah

doi:10.1163/9789460912078_020

Cited by 8 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…For example, the concept 'we have to work with uncertainty' incorporates notions such as medicine not being black and white, complexity and the lack of a single solution. We cannot be sure whether these sub-concepts are strands or steps (Shopkow 2010) that students need to integrate in order to 'get' the broader concept, or whether they are themselves threshold concepts. The notion of threshold concepts not as isolated concepts but as "highly interrelated webs or networks of concepts" (Hokstad and Flanagan 2012) particularly resonates with our findings.…”

Section: Defining Threshold Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding students’ experiences of professionalism learning: a ‘threshold’ approach

Neve

Lloyd

Collett

2016

Teaching in Higher Education

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Professionalism is a core element of curricula in many disciplines but can be difficult to teach and learn.. This study used audio-diary methodology to identify professionalism threshold concepts in a small group learning setting in undergraduate medicine and to understand factors that might facilitate students to 'get' such concepts. 15 students and 7 tutors kept audio diaries over two terms. Data were analysed qualitatively for content. The key themes were then cross referenced to threshold concept criteria (for example where language indicated that learning was troublesome, integrative or transformative). Seven potential threshold concepts were identified which centred on students' developing professional identities including working with uncertainty, considering the bigger picture, not needing to know everything and professional culture. Reflection on workplace experiences within a small group helped students 'get' these concepts. The study concludes that threshold concepts and audio-diaries are useful tools for understanding lived experiences of professionalism learning. 3 complex and contextual nature of professionalism learning is increasingly being recognised, as is its potential as a transformational, life changing process rather than simply involving the acquisition of knowledge and skills (Wilson et al. 2013). Recent literature suggests that meaningful professionalism learning and professional identity development can be fostered by authentic experiences in and around the workplace (Reich, Rooney, and Boud 2015, Wilson et al.2013) and by providing opportunities for guided, critical reflection on such experiences (Mann 2009; Webster-Wright 2009; Trede, Macklin, and Bridges 2012). Moreover, where curricula provide opportunities for students to reflect on experiences which challenge or disrupt their worldviews and to share and to discuss their reflections with peers, this can lead to "more powerful and generative understandings" (Ryan and Carmichael 2015). Coherence, the ability to link theory and practice and see the practical relevance of learning, particularly when developed through interactions with peers and teachers, can be key to fostering students' identification with their profession (Heggen and Terum 2013). One way curricula can achieve many of the goals above is through facilitated small group learning, where students reflect on their experiences with peers, are encouraged to consider issues from multiple perspectives and challenged to consider things more deeply (Platzer 2000; Kahn 2013). This can result in more sophisticated and embodied understandings of professionalism (Monrouxe, Rees, and Hu 2011). Yet exactly how small group learning impacts on students' professionalism development and identity is under-researched; we know very little about students' lived experiences of such learning, including which professionalism concepts are troublesome and transformative and which elements of the small group setting facilitate shifts in student understandings. Threshold concepts There is growing int...

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Section: Defining Threshold Conceptsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding students’ experiences of professionalism learning: a ‘threshold’ approach

Neve

Lloyd

Collett

2016

Teaching in Higher Education

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“…Although this study involved only a small group of faculty from four diverse disciplines, the findings support similar findings of expert–novice differences more broadly. For example, Shopkow () showed that bottlenecks in learning history can be grouped into three categories related to the nature of the discipline and its practices, evidentiary practices and primary sources, and affective understandings and abilities (i.e., maintaining emotional distance, overcoming affective roadblocks, being willing to wait for an answer, and dealing with ambiguity). Wismath, Orr, and MacKay () demonstrated that problem‐solving skills in a liberal education science course require mental habits of patience and persistence, a valuing of understanding over determining the correct answer, and a realization of the importance of careful and complete modeling before “plunging in.” Similarly, in design fields such as engineering, provisionality is part of practice; expert designers take an iterative and exploratory approach and consider many alternative approaches and solutions to a problem (Cross ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…They recommend that interviewers should keep the focus on the interviewee's thinking process, use questions such as “How do you do that?,” probe at the place where the interviewee cannot explain, and summarize their thinking back to them at an abstract level (Shopkow, Diaz, and Pace ). In one example from the History Learning Project, Shopkow () used interview excerpts to illustrate how the interview process can push faculty to recognize their own tacit knowledge and generate surprising realizations that what is simple and self‐evident for them is likely not so for students. This dearth of literature about the Decoding interview itself was one reason we set about to practice and study the interview process and outcomes.…”

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confidence: 99%

“…Decoding work has primarily focused on procedural and cognitive processes, and its utility in decoding other types of bottlenecks and in multidisciplinary contexts has only begun to be explored. Shopkow () used Decoding interviews of cognitive and procedural bottlenecks in history to demonstrate that epistemological and emotional bottlenecks may also be unearthed and that the conceptual and ontological are inextricably linked. Similarly, Middendorf, Mickute, Saunders, Najar, Clark‐Huckstep, and Pace () write about revealing affective bottlenecks in history.…”

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confidence: 99%

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Uncovering Ways of Thinking, Practicing, and Being through Decoding across Disciplines

Miller-Young

Boman

2017

New Drctns for Teach & Learn

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Decoding the Disciplines is a process designed to help instructors and educational consultants articulate expert approaches to difficult, or "bottleneck" concepts, and to find new ways to help students learn these concepts (Pace and Middendorf 2004). After identifying a bottleneck, the process continues with an interview which helps the instructor better articulate their own thinking, in order to then model it for students. Most Decoding work has focused on procedural and cognitive bottlenecks in specific disciplines such as humanities, history, and geology (e.g. Ardizzone, Breithaupt, and Gutjahr 2004;Shopkow, Diaz, Middendorf, and Pace 2013;Zhu, Rehrey, Treadwell, and Johnson 2012). The related scholarship has typically described pedagogical changes and resulting learning outcomes for students, with less attention given to the commonalities in themes that emerge across groups of experts. In the following chapter we will demonstrate how there is much to be learned by looking more closely at what Decoding interviews can uncover through applying the Decoding framework across disciplines.Because the focus of most Decoding scholarship to date has been primarily on student outcomes, there is little written about the Decoding interview process itself. Pace and Middendorf (2004) describe the interview as intellectually demanding for the interviewee. They recommend that interviewers should keep the focus on the interviewee's thinking process, use questions such as "How do you do that?", probe at the place where the interviewee cannot explain, and summarize their thinking back to them at an abstract level (Shopkow, Diaz, and Pace 2013). In one example from the History Learning Project, Shopkow (2010) used interview excerpts to illustrate how the interview process can push faculty to recognize their own tacit knowledge and generate surprising realizations that what is simple and self-evident for them is likely not so for students. This dearth of literature about the Decoding interview itself was one reason we set about to practice and study the interview process and outcomes.Decoding work has primarily focused on procedural and cognitive processes, and its utility in decoding other types of bottlenecks, and in multidisciplinary contexts, has only begun to be explored. Shopkow (2010) used Decoding interviews of cognitive and procedural bottlenecks in history to demonstrate that epistemological and emotional bottlenecks may also be unearthed and that the conceptual and ontological are inextricably linked. Similarly, Middendorf, Mickute, Saunders, Najar, Clark-Huckstep, and Pace (2015) write about revealing affective bottlenecks in history. In a multidisciplinary faculty self-study (Miller-Young, Dean, Rathburn, Pettit, Gleeson, Lexier, Calvert, and Clayton 2015) participants explored the utility of using the Decoding interview for studying faculty learning about reciprocity in service-learning. By analyzing each others' interviews within their community of practice, they found the Decoding interview to be useful not onl...

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“…Expertise appears intuitive , develops through extensive experience (Shopkow 2010) and is considered to be hard to articulate since it draws on tacit knowledge (Polanyi 1966;Sternberg 1999). These characteristics would seemingly challenge attempts to teach students explicitly to develop expertise.…”

Section: Understanding Expertisementioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding the validity of data: a knowledge-based network underlying research expertise in scientific disciplines

Roberts

2016

High Educ

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This article considers what might be taught to meet a widely held curriculum aim of students being able to understand research in a discipline. Expertise, which may appear as a 'chain of practice', is widely held to be underpinned by networks of understanding. Scientific research expertise is considered from this perspective. Within scientific disciplines, how research is conducted to solve different problems varies with concomitant effects on the validity of the data and the strengths of the claims made. Despite this variation, the overarching concepts of validity and reliability and the underpinning and interrelated network of more specific 'concepts of evidence' are applicable to understanding a wide range of research designs and the uncertainties in the resultant data and claims. These constituent ideas, which inter alia have been validated as relevant to professional and academic expertise, form an integrated knowledge base about evidence which can be visualised on a concept map. The network of ideas underpinning research expertise across scientific disciplines is outlined. Research from explicitly teaching the concepts of evidence is reported, and the implications for teaching and learning in sciencebased disciplines in HE are considered.

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What Decoding The Disciplines Can Offer Threshold Concepts

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Understanding students’ experiences of professionalism learning: a ‘threshold’ approach

Understanding students’ experiences of professionalism learning: a ‘threshold’ approach

Uncovering Ways of Thinking, Practicing, and Being through Decoding across Disciplines

Understanding the validity of data: a knowledge-based network underlying research expertise in scientific disciplines

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