THE MULTIVOICED CLASSROOM - INTERACTIONS OF WRITING AND CLASSROOM DISCOURSE

This article presents descriptions of and examples from qualitative ca se studies of 3 high school classrooms in Norway and the United States . The focus is on how classroom discourse and writing interact with ea ch other and provide an important and unique instructional resource. T he leachers in 2 of the classrooms consistently elicited, overtly valu ed, and helped develop student opinions and ideas. In this process, au thentic questions and uptake were common, and a great diversity of voi ces was heard. Bakhtin's and Rommetveit's dialogical framework is used as the basis of analysis, as is Lotman's theory about the functional dualism of texts. The main argument is that the interaction of oral an d written discourse increased dialogicality and multivoicedness and th erefore provided more chances for students to team than did talking or writing alone. In this way the texts, both oral and written, were use d to generate thoughts and opinions.