The Emergence of the Concept

Abstract

The concept of the third space has emerged across academic disciplines, with various nuanced differ-ences in the meaning of the term. In cultural stud-ies, Homi Bhabha used the concept to promote new understandings of hybridity in which notions of essentialism are challenged; culture from this perspective is continually in the process of hybrid-ization rather than remaining static. Edward Soja, in critical geography, imagines third space as a transdisciplinary construct in which spatiality is imbued with sociality and historicality to examine the micro-geographical, political, and social dimen-sions of everyday life. Chicana feminist scholar Gloria Anzaldúa used a related idea of nepantla to theorize the liminal terrain or borderlands " in-between " psychological, spiritual, and epistemic spaces—the ambiguous state of living/being in-between various classed, raced, or gendered posi-tions or identities that can promote a redefinition of self. In educational contexts, Kris Gutiérrez, Betsy Rymes, and Joanne Larson initially concep-tualized the third space as a space where two scripts, those of the teacher and the student, inter-sect to create a hybrid space with the potential for authentic interaction that promotes meaningful learning. Common across these conceptualizations is the attempt to exceed epistemological dualisms, as Carmen Luke and Allan Luke argue. With attention to the disruption of unproductive bina-ries, the third space allows for expansion and transformation, both individually and collectively. Third Space in Education The notion of third space first emerged in 1995 through the work of Gutiérrez, Rymes, and Larson. In their microanalysis of high school class-room activity, language and interaction are under-stood as mediators of learning that are central to the social organization of the classroom context. While acknowledging the larger metanarratives and systemic structures and practices, understand-ings of third space were theorized by focusing on the ways power relations are constructed, cocon-structed, and reconstructed through the micro-politics of the classroom. Informed by the work of Mikhail Bakhtin, the authors advanced the prem-ise that classrooms are naturally multivoiced. How ever, the inherent heteroglossia of the class-rooms is generally ignored or suppressed in tradi-tionally organized classrooms, where forms of monologism are reinforced and sustained by the normative practices of schooling. The potential for monologic class…