The nature of fourth graders' sociocognitive conflicts in peer-led and teacher-led discussions of literature.

This study investigated the nature of 97 fourth graders' sociocognitive conflicts in six peer-led and six teacher-led discussions of narrative text. The purpose was to describe the nature of sociocognitive conflicts, the discourse associated with such conflicts, and how the cognitive processes associated with such conflicts were internalized by students in different participation structures. Constant-comparative methods revealed variations between peer-led and teacher-led discussions in terms of how students in each group recognized and resolved sociocognitive conflicts. Three types of sociocognitive conflicts emerged from the data: conflicts within self, conflicts with others, and conflicts with text. Sociolinguistic analyses revealed that student discourse in peer-led groups was significantly different than student discourse in teacher-led groups in that it enabled students in peer-led groups to express themselves more fully and to explore topics of interest to them. The cognitive conflict scenario task revealed that students in peer-led groups were able to recognize and resolve episodes of conflict significantly better than students in teacher-led groups. These results suggest that decentralized participation structures produced discussions that were richer and more complex than discussions that were centralized, resulting in internalization of the cognitive processes associated with engaged reading.