Threshold concepts for educating people about human engagement in occupation: The study of human systems that enable occupation

Educators face a challenge to conceptualise and identify what knowledge and understanding needs to be included in programmes that focus on the science of occupation. The notion of threshold concepts, as proposed by Meyer and Land (2003), can be very useful in this regard. Threshold concepts are considered to be the fundamental constructs of a subject that students really need to understand if they are to master later concepts. Academic experts are invited to ascertain these for their subject. Towards that aim, this paper intends to support an earlier endeavour by a group of interdisciplinary scholars who sought to define the basic human systems that facilitate occupation. It is felt that these ideas, first published in 1991, deserve a wider audience today. At the University of Southern California, the home of occupational science, six subsystems were named and framed as being essential to the study of the unique human ability to participate in multifarious occupations, well adapted to the context. These Physical, Biologic, Information Processing, Sociocultural, Symbolic-Evaluative and Transcendental subsystems were a response to the quest to make courses more focused on occupation rather than medical subjects. Conceptualised as hierarchical, the six subsystems grow in complexity, reflecting the profound intricacy of human doing. With the advancement of science over the past quarter of a century, however, it is timely to redefine and expand the ideas within each subsystem. This paper describes the original domains and then suggests some (not all inclusive) relevant new content within each subsystem. A positive outcome of the process of updating is that the soundness of the arrangement seems to be supported. Of special note is that advances in neuroscience very much complement the initial observations within each subsystem. Here the subsystems are re-presented in the spirit of debate; appraisal and critique are sought and welcomed.