Several years ago the staff team in the Division of Occupational Therapy, School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at The University of Queensland embarked on reforming two curricula that graduated registrable occupational therapists. Threshold concepts were major concepts used to underpin our reformed undergraduate and graduate entry occupational therapy curricula (Rodger and Turpin, 2011). After rigorous interrogation of troublesome knowledge and ensuring that the emergent concepts complied with the five characteristics of threshold concepts identified by Meyer and Land (2005) we identified five threshold concepts. Subsequently, these threshold concepts were integrated within each occupational therapy course within the two programs and explained to students by way of information guides, course outlines and introduced with each new course undertaken.
Two years into the roll out of the new curricula, academic staff members were interviewed individually or in a focus group by an independent interviewer with a background in higher education and curriculum design. Data collection aimed to gather the staff members’ perspectives regarding (1) the usefulness of the five threshold concepts in designing their new courses, (2) how they used the threshold concepts in their courses, (3) how they assessed the threshold concepts, and (4) how they ensured that students engaged with the threshold concepts in learning tasks and assessment activities. The interviews were transcribed verbatim and analysed by the first two authors using standard qualitative analysis techniques (Patton, 2002). Peer and member checking were used to ensure the accuracy of interpretations. The key findings emanating from these interviews will be described and implications for further use and embedding of the threshold concepts in curricula generally and particular courses more specifically will be discussed.