ABSTRACT
Most research on language in the classroom has focused on interactions between students and their teacher. Before considering the intellectual value of peer dialogue across the curriculum, it's important to think about the extent to which they are being endangered in today's classrooms. The theoretical basis for this justification comes from some of the great developmental psychologists of our time—the Soviet psychologist Lev Vygotsky and the Swiss psychologist J. Piaget. The important idea from Vygotsky is his fundamental belief that individual cognition has a social foundation, that complex thought is in essence internalized speech. The most obvious justification is the value of such interactions for social development in a pluralistic society. It makes no sense to "mainstream" children across one dimension of diversity and "integrates" children across another dimension of diversity, unless the social organization of each classroom ensures the kind of equal status interactions from which positive attitudes across those differences can grow.
