Liminal spaces and learning computing

Abstract

‘Threshold concepts’ are concepts that, among other things, transform the way a student looks at a discipline. Although the term ‘threshold’ might suggest that the transformation occurs at a specific point in time, an ‘aha’ moment, it seems more common (at least in computing) that a longer time period is required. This time period is referred to as the ‘liminal space’. In this paper, we summarise our findings concerning how computing students experience the liminal space and discuss how this might affect teaching. Most of our findings so far relate to software engineering. As it is likely that similar liminal spaces occur in other engineering disciplines, these findings have relevance across engineering education.

Keywords:

• threshold concepts
• liminal space
• learning theory
• empirical

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Mark Ratcliffe, who participated in the design, data collection, and initial analysis of the threshold concept interviews, and Pierre Morenon, who provided information from the anthropology literature. Thanks also to Uppsala University and Umeå University for providing us with physical and virtual meeting space.