Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (2): Epistemological considerations and a conceptual framework for teaching and learning JAN H.F. MEYER 1 & RAY LAND 2* 1 Centre for Learning, Teaching and Research in Higher Education, University of Durham, United Kingdom; 2 Centre for Higher Education Development, Coventry University, United Kingdom (*E-mail: ray.land@coventry.ac.uk) Abstract. The present study builds on earlier work by Meyer and Land (2003) which introduced the generative notion of threshold concepts within (and across) disciplines, in the sense of transforming the internal view of subject matter or part thereof. In this earlier work such concepts were further linked to forms of knowledge that are ‘troublesome’, after the work of Perkins (1999). It was argued that these twinned sets of ideas may define critical moments of irreversible conceptual transformation in the educational experiences of learners, and their teachers. The present study aims (a) to examine the extent to which such phenomena can be located within personal under- standings of discipline-specific epistemological discourses, (b) to develop more exten- sively notions of liminality within learning that were raised in the first paper, and (c) to propose a conceptual framework within which teachers may advance their own reflective practice. Keywords: Threshold concepts, troublesome knowledge, identity, liminality, mimicry, pre-liminal variation. Introduction – threshold concepts revisited Earlier work (Meyer and Land 2003) introduced the basic idea that in certain disciplines there are ‘conceptual gateways’ or ‘portals’ that lead to a previously inaccessible, and initially perhaps ‘troublesome’, way of thinking about something. A new way of understanding, interpreting, or viewing something may thus emerge – a transformed internal view of subject matter, subject landscape, or even world view. In attempting to characterise such conceptual gateways it was suggested in the earlier work that they may be transformative (occasioning a significant shift in the perception of a subject), irreversible (unlikely to be forgotten, or unlearned only through considerable effort), and integrative (exposing the previously hidden interrelatedness of something). In addition they Higher Education (2005) 49: 373–388 Ó Springer 2005 DOI 10.1007/s10734-004-6779-5