Threshold Connections: Engaging trainee teachers in collaborative curriculum research to explore Threshold Concepts within secondary school science disciplines.

This chapter explores the pedagogical potential of investigating secondary school science curricula through the lens of the Threshold Concept Framework (TCF). A cohort of trainee secondary school science teachers in England worked collaboratively to co-construct their understanding of threshold concepts in A-level sciences based on their individual perceptions and experiences. Findings are presented thematically through the voices of the participants as they explored their subject disciplines and discussed and debated what they considered to be threshold concepts. Themes emerged which are argued here to be inter-disciplinary Threshold Epistemes, concepts that are not the difficult content areas identified as troublesome but constitute more abstract ideas which are fundamental to thinking as a scientist within and across sub-disciplines. These are ways of understanding, and/or systems of ideas. Threshold Epistemes identified and discussed here are: models, scale, randomness and language. This chapter further argues that the process of engaging with the TCF as a theoretical framework has potential to be pedagogically productive for teachers and pupils.