Threshold concept learning: Emotions and liminal space transitions
通过对本科生学习循证管理这一阈值概念的质性研究，揭示了学习者在阈限空间中经历怀疑、负面情绪、后悔和情感解决等关键过渡点与机制，展示了认知与情感交织的累积学习过程。
This article explores how learners transition through the liminal space when they engage with and master threshold concepts. We investigate this question through a qualitative study of undergraduate students as they grapple with the threshold concept of evidence-based management (EBMgT) as a disciplinary way of thinking and practising. Our findings elaborate threshold concept learning as a cumulative process of the learner’s engagement with the troublesome, integrative-and-bounded, irreversible, and transformative elements of a threshold concept. Through this elaboration, we show how transitions through liminal spaces in threshold concept learning play out as an interrelated, cognitive, and affective process. We identify key transition points and mechanisms related to doubt, high-activation negative emotions, regret, and emotional resolution that trigger entry into, progression through or getting stuck within, and exit from a liminal space when a learner engages with and masters a threshold concept. Our research, therefore, contributes processual insight into liminality in threshold concept learning by opening up the transitions and emotions that play out for the learners in the liminal space. We also contribute to wider debates about student engagement with disciplinary ways of thinking and practising in management.