Assessing progression in students’ economic understanding: the role of threshold concepts

This paper reports an analysis of qualitative differences between students’ understanding of flows of income in the whole economy. Previous analyses of qualitative differences in understanding of economic phenomena have been largely restricted to ‘micro’ phenomena such as price and trade. Our major interest lies in the usefulness of ‘threshold concepts’ as a way of interpreting these differences in ways of understanding. Threshold concepts (Meyer and Land 2003) have been proposed as concepts that transform and integrate previous learning with the effect that a new way of thinking is opened up. We analyse the revealed variation in conceptions of flows of income in the economy and conclude that the threshold concepts approach provides a plausible interpretation. This is important for teaching because threshold concepts potentially create considerable challenges for teachers and learners that need to be understood by both if the process of learning and teaching is to avoid slipping into create an appearance of understanding that has not been developed.