The 4th Biennial Threshold Concepts Symposium will be held 27-29 June 2012 at Trinity College, Dublin. The Call for Abstracts may be found here. The most comprehensive online repository of links to nearly everything related to Threshold Concepts is maintained by Mick Flanagan here, and it is a great place to begin for those who want to learn more about them.
Threshold concepts are a-ha moments that are central for learners to grasp or understand when working through some discipline or academic process in order for them to be able to progress or grow in that area. These thresholds are often transformative, troublesome, irreversible, integrative, bounded, discursive, reconstitutive, and linked to a liminal experience.
Threshold concepts are one of the frames I am using in my doctoral thesis, and while it stems from the 2003 work of Jan Meyer and Ray Land that focused around undergraduate education, Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: Linkages to Ways of Thinking and Practising within the Disciplines, I am following these insights and application in the area of doctoral research and identity development itself.
I really hope to attend this conference, as everything I have heard about it makes it seem central to my studies.