Exploring threshold concepts and liminal spaces using phenomenography: Engineering students’ conceptions of technology as an example

Other conference contribution, 2012

Coming to understand a new concept or discipline is a difficult journey, both intellectually and emotionally, and involves the occupation of a liminal space (Meyer and Land 2006). This journey may look different for different learners (Cousin 2009):

Some learners hover at the edges in a state of pre-liminality in which understandings are at best vague. Some will fake understandings (mimicry); some will frequently get “stuck” and most will oscillate between grasping a concept and then losing that grasp (p. 204).

In this paper, we argue that phenomenography is a fruitful approach for exploring what the liminal space looks like when a certain group of learners grapple with a certain concept. We first describe the concepts and methods of phenomenography and then illustrate the phenomenographic approach by drawing on a study that investigated how engineering students conceptualize the notion of technology (Kabo and Adawi 2011). The qualitatively different conceptions that emerged correspond to “states” or potential “stuck points” in the liminal space and shed light on what is required to make progress from one conception to another in the liminal space.