Ideas that, once absorbed, transform a student or reader’s understanding of foundational concepts in a discipline. (The “red pill,” from the Matrix films,* basically describes the same process.) The first publication articulating this idea was “Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge,” by Meyer and Land (2003). In their foundational essay, the authors characterized these concepts as “transformative, … irreversible, … integrative, … bounded, … [and] troublesome” (pp. 4-5).
Adler-Kassner and Wardle (2015) applied threshold concepts to the discipline of writing studies in their book Naming What We Know. They named five:
- Writing is a social and rhetorical activity
- Writing speaks to situations through recognizable forms
- Writing enacts and creates identities and ideologies
- All writers have more to learn
- Writing is (also always) a cognitive activity
These concepts are central to the work of Writing Across the Curriculum, as they make visible the tacit knowledge embedded in each discipline. Once this taken-for-granted knowledge is surfaced, the concepts can be interrogated and compared to those of other disciplines, setting the stage for more carefully and consciously teaching students the attributes their chosen discourse communities adopt when they write.
*”You take the red pill, you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes. Remember, all I'm offering is the truth.”