Dr Rehan Shah has been awarded a Teaching and Learning in Higher Education grant by the London Mathematical Society (LMS) for organising a one-day workshop on identifying and recognising the implications of threshold concepts in the teaching of undergraduate mathematics.

As part of this initiative, Dr Shah will organise an in-person workshop event at Queen Mary, featuring discussions and interactions between internal and external academics and colleagues from various UK universities teaching on mathematics-based modules at university level. The discussions will enable lecturers to understand what key threshold concepts exist in mathematics-based modules and to identify/recognise such concepts in order to facilitate the development of students’ understanding within their own modules.

The workshop will be of interest to a wide range of academic lecturers and education staff (from faculty directors, teaching fellows to learning and teaching support staff) teaching mathematics-based modules in higher education, and will provide a valuable opportunity for cross-institutional discussions about teaching and learning in mathematics. The participation of several key experts in mathematics education in a workshop forum will enable a fascinating exchange of ideas between mathematics lecturers and education researchers.

The workshop insights and findings will be disseminated externally to the wider mathematics community via the LMS' activity report and upcoming conference presentations. They will also help to inform future studies, such as a larger scoping review study in this area that Dr Shah is leading.

Updated by: Rehan Shah