Script, Counterscript, and Underlife in the Classroom: James Brown versus Brown v. Board of Education

Abstract

In this article, Kris Gutierrez, Betsy Rymes, and Joanne Larson demonstrate how power is constructed between the teacher and students. The authors identify the teacher's monologic script, one that potentially stifles dialogue and interaction and that reflects dominant cultural values, and the students' counterscripts, formed by those who do not comply with the teacher's view of appropriate participation. The authors then offer the possibility of a "third space" — a place where the two scripts intersect, creating the potential for authentic interaction to occur. Using an analysis of a specific classroom discourse, the authors demonstrate how, when such potential arises, the teacher and students quickly retreat to more comfortable scripted places. The authors encourage the join construction of a new sociocultural terrain, creating space for shifts in what counts as knowledge and knowledge representation.

The assignment transformed: Building a disciplinary affinity space in student blogs

“…All of this can be said to represent a search for a way of "opening dialogue" (Nystrand, 1997) within the strict and "scripted" (cf. Gutierrez et al, 1995) regime of school practices, most prominently represented by "the assignment. "…”

“…In a school assignment as a traditional practice, the eligibility conditions for students are tightly scripted (Gutierrez et al, 1995;Nystrand, 2006) in a hierarchical pattern. The students reproduce what the teacher already knows, with the purpose of saying or writing what the teacher wants to hear and, at best, of having their utterances assessed as adequate responses.…”

“…Nystrand & Gamoran, 1991. Discourses and practices, as described across different theoretical frameworks, have a double nature in that they simultaneously form action and are themselves continuously formed by action. The relative strength of these two aspects of a practice-those of being constitutive of and constituted by action-varies: some practices are loose and apt to change whereas other are rigid or "scripted" (Gutierrez et al, 1995;Nystrand, 2006) and very resistant to change. Based on how Bernstein views pedagogical discourse, it seems reasonable to consider it as a rigid practice rooted in tradition.…”

Assessing Students’ Perceptions of Conversational IsiZulu as a Compulsory Module in a South African University

“…Gutierrez, Rymes, and Larson (1995) noted that this usually happens in classes where students and teachers express their thoughts and interests freely as they engage in different learning activities in an unrestrictive space.…”

Expansive Learning at Work: toward an activity theoretical reconceptualization

“…The concept of boundary crossing is being elaborated within activity theory . For example, Gutierrez and her co-authors (Gutierrez et al, 1995;Gutierrez et al, 1999) suggest the concept of 'third space' to account for events in classroom discourse where the seemingly self-suf cient worlds and scripts of the teacher and the students occasionally meet and interact to form new meanings that go beyond the evident limits of both.…”