ABSTRACT
This chapter, nestled in the section on dialogic language and literacy education, focuses on writing – specifically on students’ thinking and linguistic decision-making in writing. It will bring together empirical and theoretical research on metalinguistic understanding and on dialogic teaching to develop an argument for the critical role of dialogic teaching in fostering the development and expansion of metalinguistic understanding about writing. In doing so, it will consider the limitations of binaries which position authoritative and dialogic talk as opposites and will offer a critical reframing of the role of teacher as expert in dialogic teaching. We will argue that dialogic teaching which effectively promotes metalinguistic understanding and the capacity to think metalinguistically requires teachers to orchestrate metalinguistic discussion in a way which draws on both teacher-as-expert and teacher-as-facilitator. In the context of metalinguistic discussion about writing, authoritative talk is not separate from dialogic talk but an integral part of cumulative episodes of the dialogic exploration of ideas.
