Transformative concepts at the heart of disciplinary practice
Every discipline seems to have concepts which – once they have been grasped – open up whole new areas of understanding. In many cases these are the ‘big ideas’ of the subject. For children learning about astronomy the conceptual shift which occurs when they understand that the earth is not at the centre of the universe is personally transforming; just as radical changes were brought about by Copernicus’ publication of ‘On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres’ in the 16th Century. These have been described as ‘threshold concepts’: capable of opening up opportunities for new learning and encouraging the review of issues previously been seen as unproblematic and commonplace.
The ‘Transforming Perspectives’ project (the name was selected to represent both the ‘threshold concept’ and their potential impact) was an ESRC/EPSRC funded project which sought to explore what these concepts might be, how they are currently taught and learned, and how new technologies might support learners in understanding them. A project team at CARET worked with an interdisciplinary group of teachers and learners to develop case studies of threshold concepts in ten varied disciplinary settings ranging from theology to sports science and engineering to english literature. This allowed a review of the nature and role of the concepts, which were seen to have a significant role in defining disciplinary identities – they were part of the expert ‘way of thinking’.
The work of the project helped formulate the ideas and approaches which were to feed into our current “Ensemble: Semantic Technologies for the Enhancement of Case Based Learning” project – which is contining the exploration of what is troublesome, controversial and contested in different subject areas.
