STLHE 2016 SAPES

In this poster, we discuss how one cohort of students, pursuing a PhD degree in Education, worked through threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge by building a student-led community of learners. This developed into a community of practice (Lave & Wenger, 1991), a group of “people who share a concern or passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly” (Wenger, 2009, p. 1). As members of this community of practice, participants were able to navigate threshold concepts arising in their PhD program. Threshold concepts, understood as “critical moments of irreversible conceptual transformation in the educational experiences of learners” (Meyer & Land, 2005, p. 373), act as “conceptual gateways.” These gateways lead to thinking and knowledge which were previously inaccessible, sometimes troublesome (Meyer & Land, 2003), and represented transformed understanding (Kiley & Wisker, 2009). Group members’ reflective responses were collected and thematic analysed to determine the meaningful outcomes of participation in the community of learners. Readers will have the opportunity to view their own learning in terms of threshold concepts, and will discuss the value of a community of learners at various levels in post-secondary education. Readers will also be encouraged to examine their own learning through threshold concepts and to consider the value of developing communities of learners. This topic will be of interest to graduate students and those who support them, such as supervisors and administrators, as it has implications for graduate student progression and program completion. The findings from our study support the position that threshold concepts are a useful framework for supporting graduate level learning (Kiley & Wisker, 2009).