Threshold concepts are considered as akin to gateways to open up new ways of thinking. These concepts act as a bottleneck to learning, whose acquisition can transform the individuals` worldviews and create mental paradigm shifts. Thresholds have some features (transformative, irreversible, integrative, bounded, and troublesome), which can be used to identify them in each discipline. In the field of language education, identification of these concepts can let policy makers, materials developers, researchers, and teacher educators help learners to cross thresholds more easily. As an example, one of the major concepts which can be troublesome to students of language teacher education is formulating research-worthy problems and having a clear view of developing a research agenda, which may lead to their liminality in research. To help the students to traverse this liminal stage, 25 Iranian PhD candidates of TEFL were taught philosophy of science in 8 sessions. At the end of the treatment, the students were asked to give their opinions of the effect of being familiar with the philosophy of science on their research insight and conduct. The results showed that philosophy of science can be used to overcome researching anxiety, uncertainty, and liminality.

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