In this work, a 3-terminal capacitance dilatometer was set up and used for measurements of the thermal expansion and magnetostriction of novel superconducting iron pinictides and related materials. In particular, \re~with R\,=\,La, Ce, Pr, Sm, Gd, \laf~and Ca(Fe$_{1-x}$Co$_x$)$_2$As$_2$ have been investigated. The data on polycrystalline \laf~are the first published thermal expansion data on this material. The lattice effects at the structural and the magnetic phase transition have been investigated and the phase diagram upon F-doping has been studied. A main result is the observation of a previously unknown fluctuation regime for the doping level $\mathnormal{x}\leqslant$ 0.04 over a large $T$ range above the structural transition temperature \ts. The absence of any structural anomalies in the normal state of the superconducting \laf~samples with $\mathnormal{x}\geqslant$ 0.05 corroborates the discontinuous character of the phase boundary not only for the magnetism but also for the structural degrees of freedom. Similarly, the presence of high-temperature fluctuations is found for all \re~undoped materials under study. The discussion of the probable origin of the fluctuations as well as the definition of the structural transition temperature \ts~are done. The low temperature features shown by the thermal expansion data for \re~are caused by the onset of long range magnetic order of the $4f$-moments and their different configurations. In particular, \pr, which has a very pronounced anomaly associated with Pr-ordering exhibits a large magnetostriction at low temperatures. By discussing this effect along with the magnetization, resistivity and other measurements, it is found that this large magneto-elastic effect may originate from the correlations between the momentum from Fe$^{3+}$ and Pr$^{3+}$. Last, the thermal expansion of Ca(Fe$_{1-x}$Co$_x$)$_2$As$_2$ 122 single crystals is investigated. Ca(Fe$_{1-x}$Co$_x$)$_2$As$_2$ is one of the first materials where single crystals are available. The thermal expansion results on the undoped compound with $x=0$ show a large anomaly at the combined magnetic and structural transition which is far sharper than that for polycrystalline systems. Upon doping, both transitions are suppressed and their splitting is visible in the thermal expansion data. The high precision thermal expansion and magnetostriction results presented in this work are among the first data on the novel family of iron-based superconductors. A valuable insight in the respective ordering phenomena and the thermodynamic properties is provided.

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