Education Commons^™

Critical Conversations: Tensions And Opportunities Of The Dialogical Classroom, B. Fecho, N. D. Collier, E. E. G. Friese, Amy Wilson-Lopez

Teacher Education and Leadership Faculty Publications

English teachers and educators of English teachers should work within rather than against the tensions present in their classrooms. For us, nothing could be more key. Until university teacher educators construct and enact classrooms that embrace the dialogical tensions and possibilities within those settings, new and veteran teachers in the profession will have few if any sustained experiences upon which to base their own dialogical classrooms. Moreover, to either deny that tensions exist or to struggle to eradicate them is to misunderstand the purpose and possibility of tension. Learners caught between stabilizing and destabilizing tensions enter a state of wobble, …