[Xmca-l] What Are Halliday's "Magic Gateways"?

Sun Jun 21 05:15:24 PDT 2020

And my other question (for everybody), which I think might elicit a nice
range of responses, is:

What do you think is the most powerful threshold concept in Vygotsky?
i.e., what is the one concept, or insight, of Vygotsky's that, when fully
understood, most opens up a new way of seeing?

>From Meyer and Land (2003): "Threshold Concepts’ may be considered to be
“akin to passing through a portal” or “conceptual gateway” that opens up
“previously inaccessible way[s] of thinking about something”

Thank you!

Anthony

P.S.  The following excerpts might hurt more than help, or confuse more
than clarify, but for convenience's sake, I'll copy and paste them here:

Meyer and Land, 2003: "Our discussions with practitioners in a range of
disciplinary areas have led us to conclude that a threshold concept, across
a range of subject contexts, is likely to be:

   1. Transformative, in that, once understood, its potential effect on
   student learning and behaviour is to occasion a significant shift in the
   perception of a subject, or part thereof.
   2. Probably irreversible, in that the change of perspective occasioned
   by acquisition of a threshold concept is unlikely to be forgotten, or will
   be unlearned only by considerable effort.
   3. Integrative; that is, it exposes the previously hidden
   interrelatedness of something."

Flanagan, 2020: "Examples of the threshold concept must be transformative
and involve a traverse through a liminal space. They are likely to be
characterised by many of, but not necessarily all of, the other features
listed below:

   1. Transformative: Once understood, a threshold concept changes the way
   in which the student views the discipline.
   2. Troublesome: Threshold concepts are likely to be troublesome for the
   student. Perkins [1999, 2006] has suggested that knowledge can be
   troublesome e.g. when it is counter-intuitive, alien or seemingly
   incoherent.
   3. Irreversible: Given their transformative potential, threshold
   concepts are also likely to be irreversible, i.e. they are difficult to
   unlearn.
   4. Integrative: Threshold concepts, once learned, are likely to bring
   together different aspects of the subject that previously did not appear,
   to the student, to be related.
   5. Bounded: A threshold concept will probably delineate a particular
   conceptual space, serving a specific and limited purpose.
   6. Discursive: Meyer and Land [2] suggest that the crossing of a
   threshold will incorporate an enhanced and extended use of language.
   7. Reconstitutive: "Understanding a threshold concept may entail a shift
   in learner subjectivity, which is implied through the transformative and
   discursive aspects already noted. Such reconstitution is, perhaps, more
   likely to be recognised initially by others, and also to take place over
   time (Smith)".
   8. Liminality: Meyer and Land [4] have likened the crossing of the
   pedagogic threshold to a ‘rite of passage’ (drawing on the ethnographical
   studies of Gennep and of Turner in which a transitional or liminal space
   has to be traversed; “in short, there is no simple passage in learning from
   ‘easy’ to ‘difficult’; mastery of a threshold concept often involves messy
   journeys back, forth and across conceptual terrain. (Cousin [2006])”.

Thank you!  (And thanks again to David, re: magic gateways)

On Saturday, June 20, 2020, David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:

> You know, nothing is quite as complicated as trying to be simple about
> something complex. So Anthony wanted me to talk about a "threshold concept"
> in Halliday, and even gave me chapter and verse about what this might
> involve.
>
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/6qf1qz__;!!Mih3wA!VYKj-5gCL8ff7lN3h_cURSpXC6jTMtuqqAHfz2biby-0HjqOsmC35hD7RMz8IFdWRySAlw$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__http://tiny.cc/6qf1qz__;!!Mih3wA!R1tuEz28TKCRX-z854TQcafClzwE-T5yfevnoxkw5DRwjpbz239rg0baB8eFK_R16hv7mQ$>
>
> Halliday was, first and foremost, a teacher like you and me. That's why he
> rejected the whole distinction between grammar and vocabulary, it's how he
> ended up involved in the Chinese revolution, it's why he asked--and even
> answered--teacherly questions like "How big is a language?" (depends on
> where you are and where you are going, but it can be calculated) and "Does
> Chomsky's distinction between surface and deep structure help you teach or
> learn anything at all?" (no) and "What is 'difficulty' and how much of it
> can we blame on the text rather than the child?" (it depends on how willing
> you are to divorce the text from the child's understanding of it).
>
> I think that precisely because he was a teacher like you and me, he
> wouldn't have liked the concept of "threshold concept": a single "aha"
> moment that retrospectively transforms the way you think about a whole
> domain like language. Yet in another sense, precisely because he was a
> teacher like you and me, he inisisted on free choice (yes, with consent!)
> as the organizing principle of lexicogrammar ("grammar-and-vocabulary",
> where the "and" is to be understood in a fully Spinozan way). So he sees
> child development as a series of magic gateways--the differentiation of
> meaningful choices, some of which are more meaningful than others. The most
> meaningful one is not "that gateway"--the one you are looking back upon in
> satisfaction--but "this gateway"--the one you find yourself on the
> threshold of.  The magic is simply in the fact that you know that beyond
> that gateway there are even greater gateways.
>
> Or rather more delicate gateways. Halliday used to say that you can really
> start anywhere when you are describing a complex phenomenon, so long as you
> remember that beyond one degree of delicacy there are infinitely others. So
> I think that the description I gave of the magic gateway here is adequate
> at about eighth grade level, with two amendments:
>
> a) The "iinterpersonal metafunction" is singular and not plural. Functions
> like "Mood" are sub-functions of this single uber-function that is the
> child's magic gateway into the whole of language. And of course beyond that
> gateway lie other gateways, e.g. "Subject", "Finite", etc.  The same is
> true of the "textual metafunction" (Theme, Rheme) and the "ideational
> metafunction" (one of the very rare sources of disagreement between
> Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan was that she insisted that there were really two
> different ideational metafunctions, the logical and the experientail, while
> Halliday preferred to see them as subfunctions of one).
>
> b) The "who" (interpersonal), the "how" (textual) and the "what"
> (ideational) are not the names of questions ("Who are you?", "How are you?"
> and "What are you made of?"  are not three different metafunctions). They
> are labels for the metafunctions, attempts by me to simplify a complex
> terminology. But a name is just a gateway, and beyond each vague name there
> must necessarily be a more delicate and therefore more definite one.
>
>
> David Kellogg
> Sangmyung University
>
> New Article: Ruqaiya Hasan, in memoriam: A manual and a manifesto.
> Outlines, Spring 2020
> https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!VYKj-5gCL8ff7lN3h_cURSpXC6jTMtuqqAHfz2biby-0HjqOsmC35hD7RMz8IFc0MKdBEA$ 
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://tidsskrift.dk/outlines/article/view/116238__;!!Mih3wA!UeTMSuYY3iGYNI80NGkgVW3vksPeX6xhNqXG1qffMzIs4RXePyHwgPaQtDiL035DfoBa0w$>
> New Translation with Nikolai Veresov: *L.S. Vygotsky's Pedological Works* *Volume
> One: Foundations of Pedology*"
>  https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!VYKj-5gCL8ff7lN3h_cURSpXC6jTMtuqqAHfz2biby-0HjqOsmC35hD7RMz8IFfxi_LIDQ$ 
>
> <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9789811505270__;!!Mih3wA!UeTMSuYY3iGYNI80NGkgVW3vksPeX6xhNqXG1qffMzIs4RXePyHwgPaQtDiL035f0sEiOg$>
>
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