In this in-depth analysis of artistic and academic lectures and performances, Lucia Rainer features an innovative conceptual and methodological tool that augments Goffman's Frame Analysis with a praxeological perspective. This way, she gives profound insight into how knowledge - as a practice and a concept - is associated with clarity rather than truth. Based on four case studies - including John Cage's unpublished and unabridged audio recording of Lecture on Nothing - the study explores how the concept of lecture performances, which adheres to two frames that never entirely blend, provides a space to (re-)negotiate the artistic-academic relationship.

Naming What We Know examines the core principles of knowledge in the discipline of writing studies using the lens of “threshold concepts”—concepts that are critical for epistemological participation in a discipline. The first part of the book defines and describes thirty-seven threshold concepts of the discipline in entries written by some of the field’s most active researchers and teachers, all of whom participated in a collaborative wiki discussion guided by the editors. These entries are clear and accessible, written for an audience of writing scholars, students, and colleagues in other disciplines and policy makers outside the academy. Contributors describe the conceptual background of the field and the principles that run throughout practice, whether in research, teaching, assessment, or public work around writing. Chapters in the second part of the book describe the benefits and challenges of using threshold concepts in specific sites—first-year writing programs, WAC/WID programs, writing centers, writing majors—and for professional development to present this framework in action. Naming What We Know opens a dialogue about the concepts that writing scholars and teachers agree are critical and about why those concepts should and do matter to people outside the field.

"Threshold Concepts in Practice brings together fifty researchers from sixteen countries and a wide variety of disciplines to analyse their teaching practice, and the learning experiences of their students, through the lens of the Threshold Concepts Framework. In any discipline, there are certain concepts – the ‘jewels in the curriculum’ – whose acquisition is akin to passing through a portal. Learners enter new conceptual (and often affective) territory. Previously inaccessible ways of thinking or practising come into view, without which they cannot progress, and which offer a transformed internal view of subject landscape, or even world view. These conceptual gateways are integrative, exposing the previously hidden interrelatedness of ideas, and are irreversible. However they frequently present troublesome knowledge and are often points at which students become stuck. Difficulty in understanding may leave the learner in a ‘liminal’ state of transition, a ‘betwixt and between’ space of knowing and not knowing, where understanding can approximate to a form of mimicry. Learners navigating such spaces report a sense of uncertainty, ambiguity, paradox, anxiety, even chaos. The liminal space may equally be one of awe and wonderment. Thresholds research identifies these spaces as key transformational points, crucial to the learner’s development but where they can oscillate and remain for considerable periods. These spaces require not only conceptual but ontological and discursive shifts. This volume, the fourth in a tetralogy on Threshold Concepts, discusses student experiences, and the curriculum interventions of their teachers, in a range of disciplines and professional practices including medicine, law, engineering, architecture and military education. Cover image: Detail from ‘Eve offering the apple to Adam in the Garden of Eden and the serpent’ c.1520–25. Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553). Bridgeman Images. All rights reserved.

"Threshold Concepts in Women's and Gender Studies: Ways of Seeing, Thinking, and Knowing is a textbook designed primarily for introduction to Women's and Gender Studies courses with the intent of providing both a skill- and concept-based foundation in the field. The third edition includes fully revised and expanded case studies and updated statistics; in addition, the content has been updated throughout to reflect significant news stories and cultural developments. The text is driven by a single key question: "What are the ways of thinking, seeing, and knowing that characterize Women's and Gender Studies and are valued by its practitioners?". This book illustrates four of the most critical concepts in Women's and Gender Studies-the social construction of gender, privilege and oppression, intersectionality, and feminist praxis-and grounds these concepts in multiple illustrations. Threshold Concepts develops the key concepts and ways of thinking that students need to develop a deep understanding and to approach material like feminist scholars do, across disciplines"--

Over the last decade the notion of ‘threshold concepts’ has proved influential around the world as a powerful means of exploring and discussing the key points of transformation that students experience in their higher education courses and the ‘troublesome knowledge’ that these often present.

Since the first literature about the Threshold Concepts Framework was published in 2003, a considerable body of educational research into this topic has grown internationally across a wide range of disciplines and professional fields. Successful negotiation of a threshold concept can be seen as crossing boundaries into new conceptual space, or as a portal opening up new and previously inaccessible ways of thinking about something. In this unfamiliar conceptual terrain, fresh insights and perceptions come into view, and access is gained to new discourses. This frequently entails encounters with ‘troublesome knowledge’, knowledge which provokes a liminal phase of transition in which new understandings must be integrated and, importantly, prior conceptions relinquished. There is often double trouble, in that letting go of a prevailing familiar view frequently involves a discomfiting change in the subjectivity of the learner. We become what we know. It is a space in which the learner might become ‘stuck’. Threshold Concepts on the Edge, the fifth volume in a series on this subject, discusses the new directions of this research. Its six sections address issues that arise in relation to theoretical development, liminal space, ontological transformations, curriculum, interdisciplinarity and aspects of writing across learning thresholds.

It has long been a matter of concern to teachers in higher education why certain students ‘get stuck’ at particular points in the curriculum whilst others grasp concepts with comparative ease. What accounts for this variation in student performance and, more importantly, how can teachers change their teaching and courses to help students overcome such barriers? This book examines the difficulties of student learning and offers advice on how to overcome them through course design, assessment practice and teaching methods. It also provides innovative case material from a wide range of institutions and disciplines, including the social sciences, the humanities, the sciences and economics.