ABSTRACT
As we argued in Chapter 3 on responding to multicultural literature, students experience a range of dialogic tensions between competing cultural perspectives and discourses, not only in their responses to texts but also in classroom discussions. That is to say that as students encounter new perspectives and information about a topic or a perspective within a text or classroom exchange, those ideas and information enter into a dialogue with their previously held notions, creating an internal tension until some sort of resolution occurs. Such a tension may also exist as they consider the tensions created by competing discourses and perspectives displayed in texts or in their lives.
