Threshold concepts in religious studies: A qualitative and theoretical exploration of threshold concepts in a “nodal” curriculum

This article explores “threshold concepts” in North American religious studies undergraduate education. The threshold concepts approach concentrates on how certain concepts or learning experiences can act like the threshold of a doorway that opens onto a new perspective for the learner. Crucially, t...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Mosurinjohn, Sharday C. (Author)
Format: Electronic Article
Language:English
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Published: Wiley-Blackwell 2021
In: Teaching theology and religion
Year: 2021, Volume: 24, Issue: 2, Pages: 79-92
Further subjects:B disciplinary identity
B transformative knowledge
B nodal curricula
B Social Construction
B unlearning
B threshold concepts
B sequential curricula
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Summary:This article explores “threshold concepts” in North American religious studies undergraduate education. The threshold concepts approach concentrates on how certain concepts or learning experiences can act like the threshold of a doorway that opens onto a new perspective for the learner. Crucially, they come into play in learning to think like a professional within a discipline. Little work has been done on threshold concepts in religious studies. In this article I explore what threshold concepts might be central to it. I also distinguish religious studies as a “nodal” discipline, in contrast to “sequential” ones, and describe how threshold concepts function in a nodal curriculum differently than they do in a sequential one. Drawing on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning literature, plus my own focus group data from religious studies faculty and students, I argue that the threshold concepts approach is useful for religious studies professors examining what concepts should be at the heart of our curricula and what it means to “think like a religious studies scholar.”
ISSN:1467-9647
Contains:Enthalten in: Teaching theology and religion
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/teth.12584