Threshold concept

Hi David and everyone.

David you are welcome. Your point about relating this threshold concept to university hierarchies is interesting. Since we seemed to hold that the threshold is the gate way rather than the end, it appears that there may be, if you like, higher levels of threshold. If this is so, could it then be that though universities might attract students with higher aspiration levels, that their thresholds within the subjects they offer might actually be higher? As such it is inherently difficult, as we also observed, to rank universities by any sort of quality criteria, except of course on their ability to attract higher aspiring students.

Perhaps it may be the case of having to recognise different societal roles played by universities, with none being less important. And eventually aiming for uiversities to balance the inherent tension and thus play various roles simultaenously. For instance encouraging wider participation by all ability/aspiration levels while also encouraging high achievement / excellence.

This all falls back on the political debate about high schools choosing by ability or by pay power. It is a difficult task coupling capitalism and socialism.

On another note, i think the threshold concept is also useful from another angle i.e. one can begin to conceptualise, not that we don't already know that, the aim of learning to be to help students cross the important thresholds in our subjects. Thus in the context of HE, it comes into play in identifying and focusing on these thresholds in our delivery rather than say 'completing the syllabus' or 'finsihing our slides'. What do you guys think of it?

HELLO

Hello all, just sending a message to test my ability to blog!

What do you think about the course so far?

I thought our conversation on the roles of education today and what we feel about the level of students aspirations was very interesting. Also the idea of hierarchy within Universities across the country and whether, in a particular field, an education from a certain institute warrants greater achievement in the eyes of their peers.

I was thinking about relating our conversion to the whole threshold learning thing. Do we need to recognize and award different universities methods with totally different threshold learning difficulties?

Would this relate to the point Rakesh rose on the level of student DeMonfort has and the notion that our achievement is greater due to the difficulties of producing high achieving students.

Testing

Thanks Valentine for your invite - this is my first blog so its one of those un-informative ones and its purpose is to convince m,e that I am doing the right thing.

Welcome message

You are welcome.

This blog is for the PG Cert HE Learning set comprising of the following individuals: Valentine, Rakesh, David and Peter.

We will be posting every week (at least), and of course comments are welcome.