Threshold Concepts and their Importance in Teaching and Learning

Andrew Ashwin

Higher Education Publisher

Cengage Learning EMEA

Threshold Concepts and their Importance in Teaching and Learning

• Some students seem to ‘get it’• Some students don’t• Why?As teachers, what are our conceptions of learning?What is your definition of ‘learning’ in Economics?

What is the Issue?

• Deep Learning – a qualitative change in understanding reality

• Surface Learning – memorising in order to re-tell

• Strategic Learning – doing enough to get the grades needed to move on

Approaches to Learning

• Act as a portal to transformed understanding of a subject

• Thinking in the subject – thinking like an economist

Threshold Concepts

• What does the idea of thinking like an economist mean to you?

• How do you know when students are thinking like an economist? What does it look like?

Thinking Like an Economist

Troublesome knowledge – fuzzy understanding and confusion“When the price goes up the demand changes and people buy less. This causes the demand curve to shift to the left and leads to a fall in price and the amount consumers buy.”“Opportunity cost is the amount of money that you would have used to buy a product”

Troublesome Knowledge

• Mental images – common features that facilitate common recognition and understanding

• Communicating our mental images

Criterial Attributes: characteristics/features that define a category or concept

Concepts

Criterial Attributes

Question:What are the criterial attributes of the following economic concepts?• Incentives• The margin• Elasticity• Real and nominal variables

Criterial Attributes

Concept acquisition – the presentation of concepts to learners – leads to representational learning (surface learning = troublesome knowledge)Concept formation – a cognitive process to assimilate concepts – leads to deep learning (= threshold concepts)

Concept Formation and Concept Acquisition

Question:If you were only allowed to teach FIVE economics concepts to a Principles of Economics class, what would they be?

Core Concepts in Economics

• Transformative• Irreversible• Integrative• Bounded• Troublesome

Threshold Concepts

• Opportunity cost• The margin• Incentives• Partial equilibrium• Comparative advantage• The failure of the market to meet social objectives• Government role in improving market outcomes• Elasticity• General equilibrium• Efficiency• Fluctuations in short term growth and its effect on aggregate

demand• Long term growth and the supply side• Real and nominal values• Cumulative causation (e.g. the multiplier).

What are Threshold Concepts in Economics?

• Starting with what students know – getting them to discover concepts

• Using appropriate questioning techniques

• The chance for students to apply knowledge and concepts to new contexts

• Designing assessment to encourage deep learning

Implications for Teaching and Learning

• Write down a definition of ‘value’• Can we come to an agreement on

the definition?• Can we agree on some criterial

attributes of the concept of ‘value’?

• Where do we meet ‘value’ in economics?

Question

• What assessment techniques do we use and why?

• Many assessment systems across the world are based on Bloom’s taxonomy (1956)

• Are there other assessment systems that would be more appropriate?

Assessment

A perfectly competitive market hasa.a) firms that set their own prices.b.b) only one seller.c.c) at least a few sellers.d.d) many buyers and sellers.e.e) a few dominant sellers

• Presenting material chapter-by-chapter

• Presenting material through ‘stories’

Does one help promote thinking like an economist more than the other?

Developing Understanding through Cases and Questions?

We have issued a call for evidence on wind. That is about cost but also about community buy-in. We need to understand communities' genuine desires. We will form our policy in the future on the basis of that, not on a bourgeois Left article of faith based on some academic perspective.If you look at what has been built, what has consent and what is in the planning system, much of it will not get through and will be rejected. Even if a minority of what’s in the system is built we are going to reach our 2020 target. I’m saying enough is enough.I have asked the planning minister to look again at the relationship between these turbines and the landscape. It seems extraordinary to have allowed them to be peppered around the country without due regard for the interests of the local community or their wishes.

Using Stories or Real Life Information

• Corrective wikis – a means of encouraging students to think and use concepts and knowledge

• Post a passage online – there are many mistakes in it.

• Students have to produce a corrected and accurate version

• Encourages collaborative working • Can record who have contributed

Corrective Wikis

Types of questioning in the classroom• Closed questions• Open questions• Obvious questionsWhy ask a question of a student when you know the answer?How does the student feel when they are asked a question in a class?How can you alleviate the psychological pressure on students?

Questioning Techniques

• Can we empathize with students new to the subject?

• Are Threshold concepts a useful way of thinking about teaching and learning in economics?

• Should we think more about concepts in our teaching?

• Can we change our teaching and learning strategies?

Summary

Publisher, Cengage Learning

andrew.ashwin@cengage.com

Andrew Ashwin