1. Transforming the Student: Idiot Schoolmasters and Threshold Concepts in the EAP Classroom Dr Dave Rush, University of Essex

2. MY PAPER Ranciere’s “Idiot Schoolmaster”
Meyer & Land’s “Threshold Concepts”
Example materials from 2nd year UG History module

3. THE IDIOT SCHOOLMASTER
Jacotot: “Anyone can teach anyone anything” Ranciere: “all men are of equal intelligence” “everything is in everything” (1991, p1, p18 & p26)

4. THE IDIOT SCHOOLMASTER
Education has “nothing to do with an asymmetry of knowledge, wherein a master possesses knowledge that a pupil lacks…but takes place instead amidst a ‘community of equals’, in which anyone has the potential to teach anyone else literally anything at all.” (Barbour, 2010, p258).

5. THE IDIOT SCHOOLMASTER
Aim = “to find the right sentences to make themselves understood by others”. (Ranciere, 1991, p72)

6. THRESHOLD CONCEPTS
“…the inter-relatedness of the learner’s identity with thinking and language.” “Threshold concepts lead not only to transformed thought but to a transfiguration of identity and adoption of an extended discourse.” (Meyer & Land, 2005, p375).

7. THRESHOLD CONCEPTS
“It is hard to imagine any shift in perspective that is not simultaneously accompanied by (or occasioned through) an extension of the student’s use of language”. (Meyer & Land, 2005, p374)

8. THRESHOLD CONCEPTS
“systematic discussion of language choices helps students see written texts as constructs that can be discussed in precise and explicit ways, which allows them to be analysed, criticized and deconstructed.” Hyland, 2018, p395

9. APPROACHES TO HISTORY 2nd year UG compulsory module
500 word “reading response” each week
2 or 3 questions given
Problem: “there is still a tendency for our students to read…articles for facts and narratives, and completely miss the argument.”

10. APPROACHES TO HISTORY
Why did Westfall find Isaac Newton’s alchemy and theology most challenging to deal with – what does that reveal about his preconceptions?
What does Westfall mean when he says he projected himself into the book he wrote?
Did Westfall’s views on historical subjectivity change as a result of writing his biography of Newton?

11. FROM THE HANDBOOK
The purpose of this module is to encourage you to think about the many and diverse ways in which historians approach the writing of history. You may at first find the module unusual, but if you work at it seriously, it will illuminate everything you study in History. As historians, we recognise that history exists only in the present and in our heads; it is actively constructed and not simply rediscovered in the records of the past….

12. FROM THE HANDBOOK
The purpose of this module is to encourage you to think about the many and diverse ways in which historians approach the writing of history. You may at first find the module unusual, but if you work at it seriously, it will illuminate everything you study in History. As historians, we recognise that history exists only in the present and in our heads; it is actively constructed and not simply rediscovered in the records of the past….

13. FROM WESTFALL
“It is impossible to study history seriously in the second half of the twentieth century without acknowledging its subjective aspects. Like every other historian, I dutifully learned that lesson early and have never dreamed of denying something that seems obvious. My acquiescence was always conditioned by the silent proviso that subjectivity applied more to others than to me.” p188.

14. REFERENCES
Barbour, Charles Andrew, “Militants of Truth, Communities of Equality: Badiou and the ignorant schoolmaster”, Educational Philosophy and Theory, (2010), 42(2): Biesta, Gert, “Say you want a revolution… Suggestions for the Impossible Future of Critical Pedagogy”, Educational Theory, (1998), 48(4): Bowman, Paul, “The Intimate Schoolmaster and the Ignorant Sifu: Poststructuralism, Bruce Lee, and the Ignorance of Everyday Radical Pedagogy”, Philosophy and Rhetoric, (2016), 49(4): Hyland, Ken, “First Person Singular: Sympathy for the Devil? A Defence of EAP”, Language Teaching, (2018), 51(3): Meyer, Jan H.F. & Land, Ray, Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: Linkages to ways of thinking and practising within the disciplines, from Improving Student Learning – Ten Years On, C.Rust (ed.), (OCSLD, Oxford, 2003). Meyer, Jan H.F. & Land, Ray, “Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (2): Epistemological considerations and a conceptual framework for teaching and learning”, Higher Education, (2005), 49: Ranciere, Jacques, The Ignorant Schoolmaster: Five Lessons in Intellectual Emancipation, trans & intro Kristin Ross, (Stanford Uni Press, California, 1991).