Portals to Learning: Threshold Concepts in Art History Teaching and Learning

Abstract

Threshold concepts are conceived of as portals to learning that open previously inaccessible ways of thinking. They encompass specific ideas within a discipline that must be mastered before the learner can progress. The process of identifying threshold concepts can reveal hidden or unacknowledged fundamental disciplinary beliefs and epistemology. Integrating a threshold concepts framework into the scholarship of teaching and learning in art history (SoTL-AH) can help faculty diagnose and anticipate when students are likely to encounter troublesome knowledge within an art history course. Distinguishing these thresholds can aid instructors in designing courses that prepare for specific stages that present conceptual or affective difficulty and turn those into transformative experiences that promote reconstituted and integrated knowledge. Threshold concepts can also be applied more broadly to benefit curriculum design, assessment, and the profession. This paper explains threshold concepts and bottlenecks, describes the benefits of using threshold concepts, identifies potential limitations in utilizing them in the design of teaching strategies, and proposes some preliminary threshold concepts in art history.