Threshold concepts are concepts central to the mastery of a specific discipline. The project team created a generic model for using these concepts to explore and reflect on student misconceptions and the teaching of troublesome knowledge for use by teachers in biology. Student understanding of the concepts was tested and interventions designed to help improve understanding. A biology teaching package was created along with a generic teaching model and guidelines to assist learning. Project publications and resources are available at the project website.
Resource Library
The Resource Library contains a collection of higher education learning and teaching materials flowing from projects funded by the Commonwealth of Australia including those from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council.
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4 resources found.
A National Soil Science Curriculum in Response to the Needs of Students, Academic Staff, Industry, and the Wider Community
The University of Sydney
2012
The University of Adelaide, The University of Melbourne, The University of Queensland, The University of Western Australia
Facilitating the Integration of Evidence Based Practice into Speech Pathology Curricula: A Scoping Study to Examine the Congruence Between Academic Curricula and Work Based Needs
The University of Sydney
2009
La Trobe University, Macquarie University, The University of Newcastle
This resource profiles two surveys that sought to elicit the views of a representative sample of academic staff and clinical educators in regards to the integration and application of evidence based practice (EBP) in speech pathology education. The gaps and challenges of incorporating EBP into curricula and clinical education and clearly discussed. The survey was undertaken in 2009 as a component of a project funded by the Australian Learning and Teaching Council.
The resource, while focused on speech pathology education, will have broader application for a range of health professions where the challenge of integrating EBP into academic and clinical education is a perennial problem. The results of the survey, while not particularly surprising, are illuminative and identify some of the key issues that educators face in creating a culture where EBP is integral to contemporary practice rather than simply another academic 'subject'.
This resource can be accessed as a pdf document as part of the full report of the ALTC project. The full report also provides an interesting contextual discussion of the issues surrounding speech pathology education and EBP.
The strengths, challenges and recommendations sections of this resource will be valuable to those involved in health professional education.
The resource is succinct (14 pages) and written in plain English. Some of the tables included in the report, although relevant, will take some time to interpret.
The authors correctly identify the limitations of the approach taken in this study, ie potentially valuable student perspectives were not sought, and the surveys were based on self-report rather than observational/behavioural measures. The resource also mentions observation of four case studies but provides only limited discussion or analysis of this aspect of the study. However, the complete case studies are available as part of the full ALTC report, as are the surveys.
Shaping a Desired Future for Australian Business Education: Learning from a Successful Scoping and Development Project
The University of Sydney
2008
Australian Business Deans Council
Using Threshold Concepts to Generate a New Understanding of Teaching and Learning Biology
The University of Sydney
2011
The University of New South Wales, University of Western Sydney
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