Creating dialogic spaces: Talk as a mediational tool in becoming a writer

This idea is further developed in the light of Bakhtin's thinking about dialogicity, and how written text is always a dialogic interplay between the writer and the reader, not a monologic act. Moreover, in school, learners are writing in culturally-determined contexts which are powerful influences on the writing produced and how it is valued. Classrooms are multi-vocal sites imbued with often tacit norms and expectations about writing, with multiple discourses co-existing in the same learning space, and with learners who present differing beliefs, values and identities as writers. To that extent, the dialogic space encompasses the intersection of the text, the writer and the context, both the immediate situational context of particular classroom communities and the broader cultural context. Creating space for talk about writing can give voice to the silences, the tacit understandings, and the multiple discourses that surround learning to be a writer. Finally, this paper draws together the Vygotskian and Bakhtinian perspectives by considering the particular role of the teacher in enabling and managing these dialogic spaces, generating rich opportunities for talk about writing, and mediating the multiple discourses of both the classroom and the wider curriculum, and assessment, context. Here Bernstein's notion of 'recontextualisation' is used as means to explore how teachers mediate their own beliefs as teachers about writing, their pedagogical and subject knowledge of writing, and their professional understanding of learners' writing needs as they initiate and foster metatalk about writing.