Threshold concept theory can identify transformative concepts in disciplinary communities of practice, making it a useful framework pedagogically for scholars of academic literacies. Although researchers have studied how to teach thres hold concepts and how students have taken up theseconcepts in learning to write, few have looked at two aspects that are particularly important for students placed into basic writing: threshold concepts of reading and questions of learning transfer.Taking an epistemological approach to disciplinary literacies, I used case study research to trace the changing reading and writing practices of Bruce, a basic writing and first-generation college student, during his first year of college as he moved from a basic reading course into biochemis-try. Bruce leveraged audience awareness to write rhetorically and to comprehend difficult texts written for professional biochemistry researchers. Findings show that audience awareness is a threshold concept of reading, one that transforms academic literacy practices and that furthersidentity in disciplinary communities of practice. These findings support the teaching of audience awareness in secondary and postsecondary classrooms, but they also demand that we recognize the additional work basic writing students, like Bruce, must do to establish agency in a system that has labeled them underprepared.

The 2013 Alan C. Purves Award Committee is pleased to announce this year's award recipients, Maureen Kendrick, Margaret Early, and Walter Chemjor, for their article Integrated Literacies in a Rural Kenyan Girls' Secondary School Journalism Club, which appeared in the May 2013 issue of RTE (Vol. 47, No. 4). This qualita- tive study examines an after-school journalism club held at an all-girls school in Kenya and reveals the ways that literacy practices can foster professionalization and identity formation for students. Kendrick et al. apply Turner's (1967) notion of liminality the realm of pure possibility (qtd. p. 395) to understand the transformation they witnessed in the students, especially in relation to the pres- ence of such materials as digital voice recorders and press passes. These items, in terms of Blommaert's (2003) theorizing of placed resources, assume a particular, local, situated meaning within the context of the club: they empower the students to do investigative journalism in their school and community. The intersection of a liminal space with placed resources allowed the girls to move from performance to competence in their journalistic roles, resulting in transformed identities. This study pushes all educators to consider the classroom as liminal space in order to locate and support such transformative literacy practices and opportunities.We applaud the authors' self-reported shift from a sole emphasis on the po- tential of the donated digital communication to facilitate students' acquisi- tion of digital literacies (p. 393) to the wider exploration of the journalism club as a resource-infused place that afforded the development of integrated literacy practices and experimentation along with new writer identities of empowerment (p. 394). Such a move celebrates the persistent agency of students and teachers who, together in their given space, make sense of the tools available-be they digital recorders, press passes, books, or standardized tests. Further, Kendrick et al. suggest that in making sense of those tools and how they might authentically be put to use, the teacher and his students also make sense of themselves as users of these ideologically rich tools.We particularly appreciate Kendrick et al.'s description of the students' meaning-making process as play; they take interest in students' experimentation with the resources made available to them and with the identities associated with those tools. In this conceptualization of what happens in the journalism club, the students and their play are ultimately more important than the particular tools with which they play. …

Research suggests that children in sixth grade are at an important threshold in developing basic skills for interpreting metaphoric language in poetry. However, there is also evidence to suggest that children, because of their dependence on concrete operations, need special forms of cuing in learning how to approach the interpretations of poems.This study investigates the effectiveness of three instructional support systems for cuing sixth grade children in interpreting metaphoric language of poetry. The first support system (Treatment A) involved regular classroom teachers who applied their own verbal cuing. The second system (Treatment B) included external instructional support through given media and the teachers' verbal cuing. The third system (Treatment C) provided internal support through the use of poets. The underlying assumption here is that the teacher who is a practicing poet brings to the classroom a unique set of writing experiences that assist in cuing. A special control group (Treatment D) who received no instruction in responding to metaphoric language in poetry was also used..Subjects in this study were taken from sixth grade classes in three different school corporations in Tippe- canoe County, Indiana. Through a method of randomization and matching within school systems, the investigator limited the number of subjects from 720 to 272 in 12 intactclasses. Each treatment had 68 children and three classes. The independent variable in this study was the method of instructional support. The dependent variables were the raw scores of children's responses to Form B of "A Look at Literature," particularly 11 critical items that dealt specifically with the interpretation of metaphor in poetry.All three poetry-instruction groups were given the same instructional approach model and the same set of 24 poems from which the teachers selected 16 poems for instruction over an eight day period.An analysis of the pre-test scores for Form A of "A Look at Literature" indicated no significant differences among treatments. An analysis of post-test scores showed no significance among treatments in the children's responses to a wide range of reading skills but that there were significant differences among treatments in the children's responses that dealt specifically with the interpretation of metaphoric language in poetry. As a result of the scores for the "11 Critical Items Measurement," the following rank order of mean scores was observed: Treatment C, Poets (highest); Treatment B, Media and Teachers; Treatment D, control; Treatment A, Teachers (lowest). The Newman- Keuls test indicated that differences between Treatments A and B and between A and C were significant at the .05 level. All other differences among treatments were not significant.The findings suggest that children learned more in classes with internal or external support than in classes with no unique system of support. From data supplied by poets and teachers, it became apparent that Treatments B and C provided more experiential types of activities, whereas Treatment A provided more referential activities in approaching poetry. Teachers in Treatment B were given two films, twenty slides, and sixteen transparencies to prime children to interpret images as symbols and to experience tension in the poems through contrasting images. The poets in Treatment C were caught up with the dynamics of interchange in discussing levels of meaning, frequently shifting between the literal, and the symbolic, constantly weaving webs of meaning based on experience. Approaches used by the teachers were often based on referential guidance, with the teachers frequently limiting and sometimes telling the responses.