Download Who’s at the Door? Vantage Point in Threshold Concepts

Bottlenecks, Thresholds,
and Transformers:
New Ways to Look
at Old Content
Jane S. Halonen
University of West Florida
Wellsprings of this Approach
 Ray Land, originator of
“threshold concepts”
Ray Land
Wellsprings of this Approach
 Ray Land, originator of
“threshold concepts”
 Rob McEntarffer,
proposer of single index
assessment items at last year’s
BEST PRACTICE CONFERENCE
Rob McEntarffer
Wellsprings of this Approach
 Ray Land, originator of
“threshold concepts”
 Rob McEntarffer,
proposer of single index
assessment items at last year’s
BEST PRACTICE CONFERENCE
 J. William Hepler,
my introductory teacher
at Butler University
(Go, Bulldogs!)
A reasonable facsimile
Proceed from these assumptions..
 Psychology is not just built
from concepts; it has now run
amok.
 Not all psychology concepts
are
 Easy to learn
 Easy to teach
 Equally valuable
 We must make judicious
selections.
What is a bottleneck concept?
Concepts that produce a reliable struggle to understand.
[Sometimes they are also threshold concepts.]
Bottleneck Exemplar
What student in his or
her right mind
would understand
functionalism
vs.
structuralism
on first exposure ?
What is a threshold concept?
 Threshold concepts have extra
impact in imparting the nature
of the DISCIPLINE.
 Students stand on one side;
teachers, through skilled
teaching, stand on the other
and pull students across to the
enlightened side.
Threshold Exemplar
“the power of controlled
comparison”
 Students don’t easily get
correlational vs. experimental
design
 Consequently, isolated terms
are difficult to understand and
apply
What’s wrong with this picture?
What is a transformative concept?
 A concept that fundamentally
changes who you are and how
you think. The impact is
PERSONAL.
 Some bottleneck and
threshold concepts can
become transformers.
Transformers
 Involve an “a ha” moment
when your new understanding
had profound effects on you
 May or may not be in the
classroom
 May or may not have been
instrumental in declaring a
major
Transformer Exemplar
Defense Mechanisms
 Everybody does it
 It distorts the truth
 It makes your anxiety go away
 People can’t realize they are
doing it or it doesn’t work
 …I do it, too!
What are the concepts
in introductory psychology
with the highest impact?
Let the data sharing begin!
 Take a moment and see
if you can identify
a psychology concept that was
“high impact” for you when
you were starting out and
explain it to your neighbor.
 Propose the category into
which you think it fits best:
 Bottleneck
 Threshold
 Transformer
Pilot Study
I asked my honors students
to identify the most
transformative concepts
 Taint of pandering
 Confusion between content
area and concept
2nd Attempt:
Dr. Awesome’s Intro Class
 Inquired about hard
CONTENT/chapter area
followed by CONCEPT
 Inquired about easy
CONTENT/chapter area
followed by CONCEPT
 Followed up by asking about
Transformative CONCEPT
 Executed through extra credit
opportunity at the end of
exam while everything is
FRESH
Dr. Tom Westcott
What content is hard?
 “Stuff on the brain” = 23 %
 Emotions = 10%
 Cognition = 7%
 Abnormal = 5%
 Language = 4%
Memorable comments
 “Remembering the names of




the ‘state the obvious’
theorists”
“Too many theories”
“The lecture”
“Theories I don’t agree with”
“I’m very thickheaded and
that was too much
information to learn”
Hardest Concept
 Hormone release and function
 Piaget’s theories (3)
 Sleep phases
 Peripheral nervous system
 Neurotransmitters
 Language acquisition
 Self-awareness
 Personality disorders (2)
 Schachter
 IQ
 Decay theory
 Yerkes Dodson
 Evolutionary theory
 Emotional intelligence
 Arousal
 Phoneme
 Erickson’s theory
 Creativity
 Negative reinforcement
 Darwin
Hardest Concept
 US = UR, CS = CR
 “Endrocrent” system
 Learning theories
 Latent and manifest content
 Probability
 Negative/positive correlation
 Dream cycles
 Natural and artificial concepts
 Push pull theory
 Neurological reaction stimulus
 Experimental theories
And my personal favorite
 Internal “focus” on control
What about transformation?
 Of 216 responses
 64 (30%) said none occurred
 24 (11%) discussed an idea too vaguely to count
 128 (59%) offered at least one specific concept
 136 concepts were identified in total
Why no transformation?
 “I’ve had the class before.”
 “Interesting stuff but just another gen ed class.”
 “Learned a lot but not life changing.”
 “Not really transformation, but my thought processes on
human behavior have been altered.”
 “Psych is interesting but all just based on common sense.”
 “..but I’m keeping the book”
Attitude and Self-Control (25)
 Attitude is key to 90% of situations
 You can choose to be mad
 I’m trying to be more patient and think things through
 After a bad shot, I don’t dwell on it. I just move on.
 There isn’t any such thing as a bad day
 You decide to let things bother you
Memory & Study Strategies (29)
 How to remember 100 things
 How to remember multiple things clearly
 Best to study in 20 minute blocks for optimal retention
 “Awesome”
Life Skills (13)
 Ask open ended questions when people are upset
 How to talk to others
 How to look at people and the world
 Reading people
 I am more observant
 I better understand people. In fact, I changed my major
because of this course.
Sleep & Dreaming (11)
 1/3 of our lives sleeping!
 I focus more on dreams than before
 Titling your dreams will help you remember them
Motivation & Emotion (11)
 Different reasons behind peoples’ actions
 How a person deals with stress and its effects on the body
 Stress because I’m a very busy, stressful person
Sensation & Perception (11)
 Made me want to go to medical school to study more
about the human body
 Everything we see around us is actually a figment of
imagination
 How the brain works and can be tricked
 I had no idea images were upside down and our brain fixes
them to be upright
Pathology (9)
 Mental disorders opened my eyes to suffering and we
don’t take the time to care
 Throughout the course I was getting free counseling to
deal with my wife and kids just be attending the class
 I have cancer. Anxiety and depression made me realize a
lot of people suffer
 Better able to understand my friend’s schizophrenia
Deception (6)
 I can tell if someone is being deceitful or not
 Learning how to predict deception in others
Learning (5)
 You can learn new things or ideas as you get older in life
 The marshmallow effect
 The idea that mental “fortacies” can contribute to learning
barriers
 I am not sure what it is called but the story where the rat
wants food and he has the shocker in front of him and he
turns around multiple times. I can relate this to peoples’
relationships around me.
Others
 Social (5): territorial space, persuasion, love and distance
 Personality (4)
 Child behavior (3)
 Creativity (1)
 Research (1): how correlations work and what it really
means to have a relationship between two things
What’s Wrong with This Picture?
 Context didn’t produce solid reflection.
 “Concepts” is an expert, not a novice, organizer.
 Is it expecting to much for an introductory psychology
course to be transformative?
 Hit rate for transformation is likely to improve with
declaration of major.
 Can this generation own transformation or is it just not
“cool?”
Challenge:
Create the High Impact Roster
 What is your best “bottleneck?”
 Operational definition:
A concept that is really difficult to teach/understand.
 What is your best “threshold?”
 Operational definition:
A concept that most effectively introduces the nature of
psychology.
 What is your best “transformer?”
 A concept that produces the strongest personal impact.
Bottleneck Roster
 Action potential
 Critical periods
 Heritability
 Classical conditioning
 Split brain
 Negative reinforcement
 Culture
 Color dynamics
 Top-down bottom-up
 Emotion
 Natural selection/evolution
Threshold Roster
 Correlation vs. causation
 Neurotransmitter influence
 Research methods as a whole
 Personality theory
 Not all psychologists are clinicians
 Basic vs. applied research
 Multicausality
Transformer Roster
 Alternative personality theory
 Bystander effect
(different set of eyes)
Unreliability of personality
tests
Brain change
Psychology = biology
Compassion and reduced
stigma
 Attraction/liking




 Power of the situation
 Disorders
 Cognitive dissonance
 Groupthink/critical thinking
 Classical conditioning
What does it all mean?
 What would happen
if we organize
what we do to maximize
high impact learning
in introductory
psychology?
 What teaching strategies
would follow those
decisions?
 What assessment ideas
would work?
What is your take-away?
Does this framework
influence how you think
about
 Content scope?
 Content depth?
 Students?
Questions/Comments
 [email protected]
Thanks for having me!