Hope Wilson
Liminal Spaces and Research Identity
The construction of Introductory Composition Students as Researchers
By James P. Purdy and Joyce R. Walker


                                         Students Accumulative Research

Do we force students to research in ways that will push them out of their comfort zone? I do not agree with the text book that advocates " When students conduct academic research, in other words, the skills and strategies they bring with them to be retooled or abandoned for fear that they will pollute their academic work" I think enhancement of collective knowledge should be encouraged. The students' relationship with their accumulative academics must be factored into how they will embrace new research processes. I agree with " Maurice Kogan (2009:209), In his discussion of the relationship among academics, academic institutions, and larger social settings, offers this description of the forces that shape academic development; ,For development to be strong, it must be firmly rooted in the intellectual self-confidence of the disciplines and subject area to which academics belong. That is the context in which a sense of academic identity flourishes. In a confident academic systems, new knowledge is generated through accepted processes of discovery and testing and through following the logic of the issues being tackle" which maybe discovered by an educator on a case by case basis.

 

Cultivating the students accumulated research skills are essential to correcting their "understanding of the research identities.  Liminality, "coming from the Latin word for "threshold," is what anthropologist Arnold Van Gennep (1960-: 10-11) presents as the transitional step in rites of passage (between separation and incorporation). He asserts that "to cross the threshold," that is, to literally or figuratively pass through a liminal space, " to unite oneself with a "new world" as an educators incorporating additional research processes to enhance students accumulated knowledge may essential to a student's future research identity.

 

I am concerned with " Web sources can indeed be of "questionable legitimacy," Maimon, Peritz, and Yancey assert (2007: 207), but we find particularly troubling in these sources is that students are to leave behind rather than build on what they already know about navigating digital research spaces," which is also vital to their research identity. Academic libraries have secure and valuable research Web sites. If students get into the habit of “Positioning the library as the required starting place for academic work” it may present a more rewarding outcome.

 

Attempting to restructure a college student’s that has been born into the digital world digital research process may be difficult. Incorporating the library Web site into their already research process at some point may be structure enough. The student’s first composition research class in elementary school should be taught to use the library Web site and current research processes which should be reinforced on other research projects. I agree that “This goal can be achieved, however without forcing students to abandon the useful knowledge and skills that form their existing research identities. Students need to be able to make their own investigations into these practices and to understand the complexities and contradictions in ways that academic research practice create knowledge." and processes that are comfortable for them.