Reading ‘See you on the other side’: Researcher identity, threshold concepts and making a ritual of confirmation by O’Reilly, I realised there are parallels with the evolution of students I teach in BA Architecture. The text helped me articulate processes I witness in the studio (and in myself as a teacher and past student) but had not yet named.
O’Reilly (2023) frames the PhD as a transformative process, not just a pedagogical journey but an ontological one that reshapes knowledge and being. He suggests that undertaking a PhD means creating a world and a new self, as the researcher themselves changes. This resonates with the journey of architecture students, beginning in Stage 1 when their first project asks them to open a new world and show why a topic matters to themselves and others.
Throughout architecture education, students repeatedly encounter moments that unsettle assumptions and ways of working. Teaching across all three years, I witness changes in their behaviour, thinking and expression as they engage with the course and each other. They progressively create an ecology of practice, collating references, values and ideas that shape their emerging identity as spatial practitioners.
I found particularly relevant the notion of ‘threshold concepts’ (O’Reilly, 2023, p.13), derived from Meyer and Land: moments of deep conceptual and identity shift that feel ‘troublesome’ because they disrupt old ways of knowing and being. Observing my students—and recalling my own experience—this is exactly what happens. Knowledge becomes ‘troublesome’ as it forces them to question everything, re-evaluating both the discipline and themselves.
I remember the painful rollercoaster of design education: losing oneself before finding clarity, where knowledge and identity are reconfigured. Each of these moments is an achievement. O’Reilly states that “this in-betweenness, this not-quite belonging is critical to learning and developing one’s practice” (2023, p.13).
O’Reilly also critiques the PhD confirmation as a bureaucratic step, proposing instead a rite of passage—a ritual of transformation where magic is involved. Although I am unsure how to engage ‘magic’ in my teaching, I am drawn to treating assessment and review as transformative moments rather than mere checkpoints. O’Reilly prompts me to welcome these as ‘learning events,’ marking the student’s new way of thinking, designing and acting (2023, p.19).
Finally, the concept of ‘assemblage’ struck me: teachers and supervisors collaborate with students in developing their ecology of practice. As a teacher, I provide tools and guidance to help them build resources, references and ethos. This process transforms both student and teacher. Teaching and learning in architecture become acts of ‘making-with,’ what Haraway (2016) calls sympoiesis: “nothing makes itself; nothing is really autopoietic or self-organizing” (p.58). Perhaps the magic O’Reilly refers to lies in sharing passion for this process and nurturing connection along the journey.
References
Haraway, D. (2016) Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene. New York: Duke University Press, pp. 58–98.
O’Reilly, J. (2023) ‘“See you on the other side”: Researcher identity, threshold concepts and making a ritual of confirmation’, Spark: UAL Creative Teaching and Learning Journal, 6(1), pp. 10–22.