Threshold concepts in dental education

The paper presents a conceptual framework to inform dental education. Drawing from a vast body of research into student learning, the simple model presented here has an explanatory value in describing what is currently observed to happen and a predictive value in guiding future teaching practices. We introduce to dental education the application of threshold concepts that have a transformative role in offering a new vision of the curriculum that helps to move away from the medieval transmission model of higher education towards a dual processing model that better reflects the way in which professionals operate within the discipline. Threshold concepts give a role for the student voice in offering a novice perspective which is paradoxically something that is out of reach of the subject expert. Finally, the application of threshold concepts highlights some of the weaknesses in the competency‐based training model of clinical teaching.