Critical Introspection, Troublesome Knowledge, and Anchoring Threshold Concepts Within Teacher Education

• In Event: Engaging With Teachers in Justice-Oriented and Culturally Sustaining Pedagogies

Abstract

This paper explores a series of collaborations whose goal has been to shift the collective consciousness and mindsets of a faculty of 30 toward justice, with the idea that this paradigm shift will also impact how faculty think about preparing future teachers. The exploration in and subsequent anchoring of threshold concepts prompted the entirety of a faculty to confront privileged personal identities. Through this confrontation with ourselves, radical curricular changes have been both imagined and enacted within our department as we grapple with how to incorporate what Meyer and Land (2005) framed as both the “conceptual gateways” and “troublesome knowledge” (p. 373) associated with understanding disciplinary ideas.

Authors

• Brian D. Schultz, Miami University

• Scott Sander, Miami University - Oxford

• Sheri L. Leafgren, Miami University