This case study explored how secondary English language arts teachers advanced the social justice goals of a critical multicultural literature class within a dialogic classroom environment encouraging the free exchange of multiple perspectives. The study examined two teachers' experiences and tensions in negotiating two simultaneously held commitments: The first, a commitment to carrying out social justice goals; the second, a commitment to creating a dialogic classroom environment in which students express diverse points of view, including views that may resist the class's social justice goals of increasing students' multicultural knowledge, advocating student adoption of cultural pluralism as philosophy and/or developing student dispositions capable of challenging societal inequities based on forms of privilege arising from aspects of identity (e.g., race, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity). Through analysis of classroom observations, graded student writing samples, and teacher interviews, the study found that students offered resistance in the form of silence, lack of engagement, denying the reality of the issue of critique, becoming defensive, offering rationalizations, othering, and hostility. With the exception of lack of engagement, these forms of resistance were met with dialogic bids on the parts of the teachers. In addressing resistance, the teachers relied on their roles as English teachers critiquing students' process of thinking. Their comments during discussion and in writing encouraged students to refine their thinking by identifying specific evidence leading to their conclusions. By offering open-ended questions as discussion prompts and as feedback to student statements, the teachers inspired inquiry in their students without telling them what to think. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]