Threshold knowledge
Threshold knowledge is a term in the study of higher education used to describe core concepts—or threshold concepts—which, once understood, transform perception of a given subject, phenomenon, or experience.
The term was introduced by Jan Meyer and Ray Land, Meyer and Land also discuss the related idea of troublesome knowledge, ideas that appear alien or counter-intuitive. The theory holds that:
These ideas have been explored by several subsequent researchers in a variety of disciplinary contexts including:
- International theory
- Science education
- Economics
- Healthcare education
- Miscellaneous
- Statistics
- Information literacy
- Writing studies
The notion of threshold concept is related to the notion of bottleneck in the Decoding the Disciplines framework. It can be considered a special case of the latter.