Scripts and Speech Acts in Administrative Behavior: The Interplay of Necessity, Chance, and Free Will

Research on administrative behavior in schools has been limited in a number of fundamental ways. This article reviews criticisms of structured observation recently published in EAQ and describes a new methodology which addresses many of these weaknesses. This approach draws upon script theory (a form of schematic structure hypothesized by cognitive and social psychologists) and speech act theory (a form of linguistic discourse analysis) to capture the nuance, dynamism, and pattern of verbal interaction. An interpretive method for coding verbal behavior into speech act categories and a computer-augmented system for mapping scripts across instances of similar administrative activities are described.