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Threshold concepts are the core knowledge and disciplinary capabilities that students must successfully transition through to make progress in their majors. The threshold concepts (TC) framework is the guiding framework of our signature Faculty Writing Fellows Program, which supports faculty members in teaching students to write more effectively in their disciplines and professions and to use writing in ways that encourage deep learning of disciplinary material. The TC framework is useful in helping make visible disciplinary conventions that have become tacit over time, and in helping identify where students might get “stuck” in the learning process and where best to intervene.

In this resource, we unpack the TC framework in an effort to help you think through how it might help in classroom planning and assignment design. Check out our "Composing Effective Writing Assignments" resource for more on how to bring ideas related to threshold concepts into pedagogical practice. 

Summary of the Threshold Concepts Framework

Threshold concepts are foundational concepts a learner internalizes as they come to fully participate in a discipline. They are akin to a “portal” that unlocks "a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something" (Land et al., 2005, p. 53).  These disciplinary concepts are defined collaboratively when experts from fields come together to name what they know, and—like disciplinary knowledge—these concepts are ever-changing.

Some examples of threshold concepts include:

• “Opportunity cost” from the field of Economics (Davies & Mangan, 2007)
• “Change through space and time” from the fields of Earth and Environmental Science (Ryan, 2014)
• “All writers have more to learn” from the field of Writing Studies ()

Research on threshold concepts began as part of a 15-department at the University of Durham, UK from 2001-2005. Meyer and Land found that individual disciplines have unique ways of thinking and knowing and, therefore, unique challenges for teaching their students. From this original study, researchers across the globe have studied the TCs of their own disciplines and implications for student learning.

From research on threshold concepts, we know that they are:

• Transformative. TCs significantly shift how students perceive the required work process and product of their discipline/s and how they must perform as a member within that field. Access to these ways of knowing and doing occurs over time and thorough engaged participation.
• Integrative. TCs reveal the interconnectedness of the discipline when students connect together ideas from between and among what they had previously believed to be unrelated aspects of their studies.
• Troublesome. TCs provoke “rupture[s] in knowing” in which students untangle intellectual uncertainties (Schwartzman, 2010, p. 38).
• Bounded. TCS reflect ways of knowing within specific disciplines; however, these are the threshold concepts that meaningfully inform how we teach across the disciplines, such as those from writing studies.
• Irreversible. TCs change how students think and approach problems, to the extent that it is difficult to revert back to a previous way of understanding.

Additionally, when students wrestle with threshold concepts, they pass through differing stages of liminality based upon their experiences and learning.

Source: (Land, Meyer, & Baillie, 2010, p. xii)

How to Use Threshold Concepts as the Basis for Course and Program Design

While threshold concepts are not to be confused with learning outcomes, they can serve as the basis for course and program design. 

One helpful approach is for an instructor to identify threshold concepts for a specific course and then work backwards from that threshold concept to design major course assignments, smaller course activities, requited scaffolding, etc. (refer to for more guidance). Sometimes, it helps to start with the big picture and work backwards down to the smaller, more specific components. 

For an entire program, it could help for faculty to work together to identify the various threshold concepts they wish for students to learn throughout their program and identify which courses can address which threshold concepts. This mapping could be broken down to whether the threshold concept is a major focus, a moderate focus, or a minor focus. The act of mapping a curriculum in this manner can help a program see where some threshold concepts and other course concepts might overlap, and also identify where a program might need more information (for example, if students take courses in another department).

Please for more guidance on how you might map your curriculum in this way. This framework is adapted from Chris Anson at North Carolina State, and it’s been used with other curricula at ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú. 

Threshold Concepts at ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú

Over 190 faculty members have completed our Faculty Writing Fellows Program, and have innovated their writing instruction to in part help teaching the various TCs in their disciplines and programs.

The Disciplinary Writing Guides on our HWAC website directly build from the work of former Fellows. See how a few of them have identified threshold concepts and integrated them in to assignment and course design:

• Art History 
• Gerontology
• Philosophy 

Additionally, ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú faculty members have published about threshold concepts and curricular work, including 22 alumni who published chapters in HWAC staff members’ edited collection . The faculty authors in the collection share their experiences teaching threshold concepts in their courses and across their programs, describing their approaches and also the very real challenges they have faced and the types of larger-scale change they aim to create.

We provide further reading in the next section, but wanted to note here the important role threshold concepts play in so many programs and courses across ÍÃ×ÓÏÈÉú. There’s so much generative potential with this framework, and we invite you to apply for Fellows to learn more yourself by participating in the full program.

Further Reading

• Adler-Kassner, L., & Wardle, E. (Eds.). (2015). Naming what we know: Threshold concepts of writing studies. University Press of Colorado.
• Anderson, C., & Day, K. (2005, November). : History. Report from the Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments in Undergraduate Courses Project. University of Edinburgh.
• Davies, P., & Mangan, J. (2007). Threshold concepts and the integration of understanding in economics. Studies In Higher Education, 32(6), 711-726.
• de Medeiros, K., & Kinney, J.M. (20200. Writing like a gerontologist for The Gerontologist. The Gerontologist, 60(5), 793-796. 
• Donald, J. (2001). Learning to think: Disciplinary perspectives. Jossey-Bass.
• Elon University's Center for Engaged Learning. .
• Entwistle, N., McCune, V., & Hounsell, J. (2002). . ETL Project Occasional Report.
• Flanagan, M. (2017). . University College of London.
• Glotfelter, A., Martin, C., Olejnik, M., Updike, A., & Wardle, E. (Eds.). 2022. . Utah State University Press.
• Land, R., Meyer, J. H., & Flanagan, M. T. (Eds.). (2016). Threshold concepts in practice. Springer.
• Land, R., Meyer, J. H. F., & Smith, J. (Eds.). (2008). . Sense Publishers.
• Meyer, J., & Land, R. (2003). . Occasional Report 4: Enhancing Teaching-Learning Environments in Undergraduate Courses Project.
• Meyer, J. H. F., & Land, R. (2006). Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: Issues of liminality. In J. H. F. Meyer & R. Land (Eds.), Overcoming barriers to student understanding (pp. 19-32). Routledge.
• Meyer, J. H. F., Land R., & Baillie, C. (2010). Threshold concepts and transformational learning. Sense Publishers.
• O'Mahony, C., Buchanan, A., O'Rourke, M., & Higgs, B. (Eds.). (2014). .
• Ryan, A. M. (2014). Seeing deeply in space and through time: Interdisciplinarity meets threshold concepts in Earth and Environmental Science.
• Schwartzman, L. (2010). Transcending disciplinary boundaries: A proposed theoretical foundation for threshold concepts. In R. Land, J. Meyer, & C. Baillie (Eds.), Threshold concepts and transformational learning (pp. 21-44). Sense Publishers