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.

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Through ethnographic, discourse and grammatical analysis, this article discusses the narratives of two high-school drop-outs and describes the various resources these young people use to fashion their identities through the telling of their stories. Through analysis of both clause-level expression of grammatical agency and discursive and cultural contextualization of agentive actions, it is shown that these young people, despite their apparent limited agency in the larger society, express moral agency through their active narration of the events of their lives. It is not only the content of their narratives, but also the way these stories are told that indicate the moral agency of the speakers. A conceptualization of moral agency is developed as it relates not to static universals, but to the shared particulars among this peer group and the common language they use to talk about their experiences.

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With the goal of illuminating how identity and cognition are in tension in classroom activity, we examine how one second‐language learner answers questions in a mainstream second‐grade classroom. To understand this learner's participation, we analyze two conflicting “language games.” We find the second‐language learner often is adept at “passing” as knowing, but that he achieves this identity‐preserving expertise at the expense of an understanding of classroom lessons.