Methodological challenges in researching threshold concepts: A comparative analysis of three projects

Abstract

Threshold concepts were introduced nearly 10 years ago by Ray Land and Jan Meyer. This work has spawned four international conferences and hundreds of papers. Although the idea has clearly gained traction in higher education, this sub-field does not yet have a fully fledged research methodology or a strong critical discourse about methodology. This paper seeks to begin such a dialogue by analysing three projects carried out by the authors, each focused broadly on identifying and understanding threshold concepts in engineering. Each of the projects used interviews with students and academics, but differed in six main ways that seem to make a difference to the research outcomes. This paper con..