A study described the characteristics of sociocognitive conflicts and the discourse associated with such conflicts, and determined how the cognitive processes exercised during discussion were internalized. Participants were 97 fourth-grade students and 6 elementary classroom teachers. Peer-led and teacher-led discussions of texts were examined to determine the role of sociocognitive conflict in these discussions. Constant-comparative methods revealed three categories of sociocognitive conflict: conflict within self; conflict with others, and conflict with text. Sociolinguistic analyses revealed that students' discourse in peer-led discussions was significantly more complex than in teacher-led discussions. The Cognitive Conflict Scenario revealed that students in peer-led discussions were able to recognize and resolve sociocognitive conflicts better than students in teacher-led discussions. Findings suggest that peer-led discussions produced richer and more complex interactions than did teacher-led discussions and resulted in the internalization of the cognitive processes associated with engaged reading. (Contains 61 references, 5 tables and 6 figures of data; the Cognitive Conflict Scenario Task Pre/Postttest and the scoring rubric are attached.) (RS)