An Inconvenient Truth was a catalyst for change in the way many adults think about the environment. North American youth are perpetuating the dominant consumerist paradigm, and will need to change their attitudes and behaviour to restore the health of the planet in the future. This study identifies the content and messaging that youth see as effective to engage their peers in pro-environmental attitudes and actions. Middle school participants created environmental videos following a Participatory Video methodology. A content analysis of the videos revealed that youth are optimistic and advocate grassroots community action to “save the world.” The dominant messaging in the videos is “peer talk,” characterized by youth language and diction, youth speaking directly to the youth audience, youth talking to youth on screen, and content that is relevant to youth. These findings are recommended in a grounded theory of effective environmental education for youth through video.

Language is power. Especially among preschool children, where one of the most coveted identities sought during social interactions is that of the leader. Leadership is not taken; it is given when individuals accept instructions from someone else and let them lead. These individuals then become followers. I decided, after reading various literature and scientific research about children’s peer talk and linguistic interactions, to study how preschool children use linguistic interactions and strategies to form the identities of leaders and followers during free play; scheduled points during the day where activities are based on the children’s interests and not led by preschool teachers, which aids in trying to see things from the children’s perspective. I did a video-enabled microethnographic study over the course of a week as a complete observer to capture the strategies used by five children (ages 5 to 6) to form the identities of leaders and followers during their peer talk and peer group interactions. After transcribing the recorded material where these social interactions were most apparent, I then analyzed at which points the children were given these identities and what strategies were used as resources from a sociolinguistic perspective. Three primary strategies were identified; speech genres, code-switching and language play. I also discovered that the children were inspired by their surroundings and the available materials in choosing what to play and base their linguistic interactions on. I concluded that leadership is closely related to expertise about various subjects and that followers allow individuals with more expertise than them to lead. This is how our society typically works. The children used their various levels of expertise regarding the subject matter and strategies like speech genres, code-switching and language play as resources to raise their own status and attempt to lower the status of others, forming the identities of leaders and followers.

This dissertation is a teacher research study of student engagement within peer-led literature circles. Collaborating with 10 seventh grade students in my writing and literature classroom who asked to read 1984 in literature circles, I explored how students engage with each and with literature within peer-led discussion circles of a relatively difficult text. Participants were taped during peer-led literature circles and interviewed about their experiences and perspectives on engagement with peers within the context of the classroom. Using Fleck's (1935) notion of thought style and thought collective I noted that participants' talk about the novel and their perspectives on the experience was shaped by their dynamic, ever changing subject positions as adolescents, students, boys and girls, and as members of the middle class. This study explores their subject positions and how they shaped student engagement as reflected their interactions and talk for the purpose of generating a theory of social learning within this particular classroom context. Implications include the role of teacher inquiry as an integral part of literacy teaching, and the use of discourse analysis as tools for teachers, teacher educators, and researchers in developing a critical perspectives on the classrooms and teaching. Additionally, the study offers a framework for supporting teachers, teacher educators, and researchers in listening to and critically assessing peer-talk within the classroom and how such knowledge can guide reflection and inform practice.