Using threshold concepts to think about curriculum design
Using threshold concepts to think about curriculum design
Thank you so much to everyone who helped out, presented, turned up on a wet Saturday or just joined in from afar on our creaky Livestream (I’m particularly devastated that Professor Ray Land’s keynote will be lost to posterity!)
I will, in due course, write something which pulls together the experience of organising Saturday’s #researchED’s first subject-specific conference, but for now, here are the slides you’ve all been clamouring for (actually no one has asked, but in case you were vaguely interested.)
You can also watch me try to explain what I mean here. In case you’re wondering why I’m so puffed at the start, hilariously (!) I hadn’t managed to save the talk on to my memory stick and had to sprint out to my car to find my laptop with minutes to space.
The big change a-coming for curriculum design is that the final vestiges of modularity will soon have been licked clean from the assessment spoon; from September it will linearity all the way. Many English teachers have never worked in such a system and there's widescale panic about how exactly we can…
This is the second in a series of posts unpicking the Top 20 Principles From Psychology For Pre-k–12 Teaching And Learning. This time it's the turn of Principle 2 – What students already know affects their learning to come under the microscope. You can see the other principles here. Students' minds are not…
The tragedy of life is that one can only understand life backwards, but one must live it forwards Søren Kierkegaard Back in March 2013, I wrote about the principles underlying my redesign of a Keys Stage 3 English curriculum. It received a mixed response. Since then Joe Kirby and Alex…
I really enjoyed Research Ed yesterday and my head is buzzing. Prof Land’s keynote was just tremendous. I live my life in liminal states so it really chimed with me. I think i bored him trying to talk about Jekyll/Hyde as the ultimate troublesome threshold metaphor though!
It would be very interesting to see whether we have a shared view of what the threshold concepts are across English Departments. I would also say there is a great appetite for subject specific research in English and literacy (possibly across phases too) so i look forward to the next one.
“It would be very interesting to see whether we have a shared view of what the threshold concepts are across English Departments.”
Wouldn’t it just! And I wonder if we’d agree on the threshold concepts of ‘English’ regardless of curriculum or exam board…
David Williams
November 8, 2015 at 8:31 pm - Reply
Been thinking a lot about this. Do you think enjoyment or feeling can actually be detrimental to learning. I’m thinking of the enjoyable lecture you attended without remembering what it meant. Also made me think of advertising. Some adverts are entertaining, but actually they are terrible at getting you to remember or buy the product. There was a “Vicks First Defence” ad like that. On the other hand “Cillit Bang” although crass is actually a highly effective advert – who can forget Barry?
What do you think?
I’m not sure about it being detrimental, so much as a poor indicator of learning. I thought other research indicated that greater engagement led to better learning? I’m not talking about the ‘Shrek’ lesson but rather, if there was a reason for students to learn or it had some importance / relevance to them, they were more likely to make an effort and possibly retain it.
Thanks to all of you for organising Saturday’s event. Much to mull over. I wonder if anyone could remind me of the links that Prof Land put up on screen at the end of his session. I didn’t take a picture and missed the key reference to someone from a London University, I think. Cheers.
[…] shaming that have become routine on social media. This has given way to a new kind of bully, the Cry-Bully, “a hideous hybrid of victim and victor, weeper and walloper.” This has led to social […]
So how long do we wait to see if the gamble did indeed pay off? Any interim results that indicate greater learning or will that only come at the end of the GCSE (?) course?
[…] this also something for English teachers to consider. After I spoke at Threshold Concepts in English at researchED, a number of people asked me why I hadn’t included comparison, after all, […]
[…] Opportunity cost, the idea that making a choice precludes another option being chosen, is a threshold concept. It’s hard to get your head around all the implications but once you do, it changes you. You […]
I really enjoyed Research Ed yesterday and my head is buzzing. Prof Land’s keynote was just tremendous. I live my life in liminal states so it really chimed with me. I think i bored him trying to talk about Jekyll/Hyde as the ultimate troublesome threshold metaphor though!
It would be very interesting to see whether we have a shared view of what the threshold concepts are across English Departments. I would also say there is a great appetite for subject specific research in English and literacy (possibly across phases too) so i look forward to the next one.
“It would be very interesting to see whether we have a shared view of what the threshold concepts are across English Departments.”
Wouldn’t it just! And I wonder if we’d agree on the threshold concepts of ‘English’ regardless of curriculum or exam board…
Been thinking a lot about this. Do you think enjoyment or feeling can actually be detrimental to learning. I’m thinking of the enjoyable lecture you attended without remembering what it meant. Also made me think of advertising. Some adverts are entertaining, but actually they are terrible at getting you to remember or buy the product. There was a “Vicks First Defence” ad like that. On the other hand “Cillit Bang” although crass is actually a highly effective advert – who can forget Barry?
What do you think?
I’m not sure about it being detrimental, so much as a poor indicator of learning. I thought other research indicated that greater engagement led to better learning? I’m not talking about the ‘Shrek’ lesson but rather, if there was a reason for students to learn or it had some importance / relevance to them, they were more likely to make an effort and possibly retain it.
Thanks to all of you for organising Saturday’s event. Much to mull over. I wonder if anyone could remind me of the links that Prof Land put up on screen at the end of his session. I didn’t take a picture and missed the key reference to someone from a London University, I think. Cheers.
[…] shaming that have become routine on social media. This has given way to a new kind of bully, the Cry-Bully, “a hideous hybrid of victim and victor, weeper and walloper.” This has led to social […]
[…] Using threshold concepts to think about curriculum design | David Didau: The Learning Spy […]
So how long do we wait to see if the gamble did indeed pay off? Any interim results that indicate greater learning or will that only come at the end of the GCSE (?) course?
[…] this also something for English teachers to consider. After I spoke at Threshold Concepts in English at researchED, a number of people asked me why I hadn’t included comparison, after all, […]
[…] Opportunity cost, the idea that making a choice precludes another option being chosen, is a threshold concept. It’s hard to get your head around all the implications but once you do, it changes you. You […]