Last night, we discussed Purdy and Walker's "Liminal Spaces and Research Identity." Purdy and Walker contend that introductory composition classrooms are liminal spaces, transitional spaces between the non-academic world and the university, in which students are learning to acquire an “academic discourse.” As set up now, however, they argue that the textbooks in introductory composition courses require students to forget their old existing research practices in favor of learning new academic research practices, an approach that undermines the development of “robust, flexible research identities.” To support their argument they conduct a content analysis of texts (online and offline) to teach research writing and find that it is taught in a linear manner that doesn’t represent it accurately. Thus, they recommend that pedagogy should find ways to connect the research practices that students already have to academic and primary research practices, and to see research not as