Troublesome knowledge is one of the most interesting aspects of Threshold Concepts and a central feature of wiki-making and learning. David Perkins describes troublesome knowledge as that which "appears counter-intuitive, alien (emanating from another culture or discourse), or seemingly incoherent" paper 
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Glynis Cousin notes an important aspect of troublesome knowledge: students require a holding environment for the toleration of confusion: "Teachers must demonstrate that they can tolerate learner confusion and can ‘hold’ their students through liminal states. Moreover, in our research some students expressed the fear they were the only ones among their peers who did not comprehend difficult concepts. While it became a source of huge relief to discover eventually that other students were similarly confused, this awareness needed to be shared early on in the course. Unless teachers devise activities that uncover this, many
students will suffer in silence." paper
Catherine Cronin In FedWikiHappening, Mike, Ward and a network of peers are doing an incredible job of facilitating this holding environment as we move through confusion, unlearning, learning.
Maha Bali All of which highlights two important aspects of this event: 1. the importance of a supportive community who are both willing to admit vulnerability & confusion AND to support each other; and 2. that this experience as newbies in #fedwikihappening helps us as pedagogues put ourselves in our own students' shoes when they experience something alien like this. Every teacher needs to be put in learners' shoes often enough not to lose sight of that experience. Thanks Catherine Cronin for starting this post and of course Mike & Ward for the event itself! And the whole community for making it easier to navigate.
Kate Bowles Related: Tell a Passing Stranger is a potential design principle related to peer support among strangers facing Troublesome Knowledge in confusing environments. Alyson Indrunas Is there a connection to the passing of information mentioned in Camino de Santiago by Kate Bowles? Kate Bowles Tell a Passing Stranger emerged from the article on the Camino de Santiago, which emerged from the article on We Make the Road by Walking. By this point I was just a tiny, tiny Matryoshka doll spinning way out in space humming David Bowie tunes to myself, entirely lost.
Jenny Mackness I heard Glynis Cousin speak about threshold concepts, troublesome knowledge and liminality at Lancaster University. After this I wrote in my blog:
Curriculum design which takes account of threshold concepts is not a spiral curriculum – it is more like an octopus, incorporating many ‘trigger’ materials – materials that shape who you are. What interferes with design approaches are the students themselves. They often do not understand the rules of engagement of being a University or College student. They not only need to gain conceptual mastery, but also learn to be a student. So there is a lot of ‘noise’ going on as students find themselves in a state of liminality, oscillating betwixt and between mastery and troublesome knowledge. Learning is anxiety invested. blog
This seems to describe what's going on here in this Fedwiki?
Catherine Cronin I agree, Jenny. I feel like that's what's happening for many of us in FedWiki. Thanks very much for sharing your related blog post here. The adjectives and metaphors from the first and last paragraphs on this page (so far) tell a powerful story: counter-intuitive, alien, octopus, anxiety.
Many of us contributing on this page (Maha, Kate, Alyson) have highlighted the central importance of peer support. We are creating a network of ideas, not just by editing information on pages but by holding and helping one another in the process. This results in two distinct voices in the wiki -- content (dissertation) and connecting (discourse). Must wikis privilege the former? Or can we, are we, creating a different kind of wiki? I don't know yet. Related: Dissertation Over Discourse
Mike Caulfield: It's worth noting that Dissertation Over Discourse might be better framed as Discourse Supporting Dissertation. Meaning the idea is that it is the work of trying to integrate our knowledge that pushes us to engage in better discourse and to make our discourse accessible to outsiders (one thing people forget about discourse is how much it keeps power from outsiders, consider that the power assertion on Wikipedia is waged on the talk pages, with people show have not mastered discourse norms).
If at some point someone consolidates the discussion here into a single concise document, it allows newcomers access to these ideas without having to rerun the whole discourse history (a phibitive cost of entry into a conversation). But the tension is in when that would happen and if there would be one or many consensus documents.
This seems like I've gotten off track, but I think maybe not -- because it is this pattern of refactoring discourse into dissertation that aids liminal parties in their transition to the community, levelling the playing field.
Maha Bali I think there are still power dynamics at stake here in #fedwiki, even if there is a degree of agency in one's "own" copy of a document; there is still the feeling of how well-received your edits have been, etc. I personally have gotten frustrated by my edits being ignored unintentionally (because I think some people kept editing their own copies rather than the latest ones) - I imagine if it were a document close to my heart and people intentionally ignored my copy because they found it less worthy, I'd be offended. Which of course happens on wikipedia. Would this mean doing a #gamergate entry on a #fedwiki might result in a version from the feminist perspective and a version from the gamer's perspective. hmmm I actually kind of like that. History told from multiple points of view. This might actually be a really good thing...