‘Scaffolding’ v ‘Digitally-enabled co-construction of ‘troublesome knowledge’. The case of ‘engaging with theory in literary close reading’.
The metaphor of scaffolding (or as many prefer, trellising!) student learning has been as seminal to Threshold Concepts as Ray Land's Canongate threshold and Alhambra and Lindisfarne beckoningly lit portals. Yet, that metaphor gained currency when that supporting structure was provided by the teaching and assessing institution, through reading lists, assessment rubrics, academic citation practices etc. These were both concrete - books, lists, photocopied or journal articles etc. - and laid down by the institution.
However, research in Digital Literacy practices has shown that today’s students are engaging with digital texts (texting, online chat, web browsing, social-networking and -referencing sites) in far from traditional ways. Simultaneously, web-based learning environments, notions of connectivity, the potential of social networking, digital and mobile technologies are permeating the academy, through student practice and dominant institutional drivers and government-led technology funding. Recent digital literacies research shows students as highly adept at drawing on technologically-mediated, hybrid textual genres in the process of meaning making.
Where does this leave 'Threshold Concepts in the context of research-informed teaching'? Lea and Jones' study across 5 subjects in 3 HE and FE institutions suggests that 'the complex interrelationship between literacies and technologies [has] the potential to disrupt conventional academic literacy practices'. So how in this ‘scaffolded otherwise’ and peer socially-networked and -referenced learning environment can and do students approach the thresholds and come, and dare, to cross them? What kind of co-constructed meaning do they make? Troublesome, or not?
In a small but hopefully illuminative case study, this paper will report on answers from English Literature students about what is proposed as a Threshold Concept in Literary Studies: engaging with theory in the close reading of texts.