Abstract
In an attempt to reveal potential threshold concepts in the field of higher education pedagogy, groups of university teachers (in the UK and in Panama) were encouraged to develop personal reflection upon their conceptions of teaching. This was initiated through concept mapping activities. It was hoped that this would help participants to address the perceived differences of teaching between their disciplines whilst coming to recognise the generic factors that may be applicable to teaching across the university context. Consideration of emergent personal models allowed the authors to identify common themes across the disciplines and to align this to established learning theories that may act as a baseline for comparison. The emergent generic model was a modification of Kolb's learning cycle in which two learning cycles (one for the student and one for the teacher) are linked by the shared concrete experience of the classroom and considered in the context of knowledge structures. The transformation of the morphology of these knowledge structures (oscillating between linear and hierarchical) is seen as fundamental to the successful negotiation of the cycle. The participants' recognition of this structural transformation is proposed as a threshold concept for the evolution of university teaching. Personal models are described here in relation to the double Kolb cycle to illustrate the potential of this approach to stimulate discussion about university teaching that may encourage a transformation in perspective from delivery and receipt of content towards structural transformation of content.