Teachers’ Coordination of Dialogic and Authoritative Discourses Promoting Specific Goals in Socioscientific Issue-Based Teaching

The integration of socioscientific issues (SSI) into science teaching requires that teachers manage classroom discussions in which various perspectives are considered and students’ contributions are recognized. The present study aimed to provide knowledge of how classroom discussions on SSI can be structured and implemented to pursue specific teaching purposes. In this study, two secondary science teachers’ employment of communicative approaches during four discussions on SSI was analysed. In the studied context, communicative approaches can be described as involving various or only a single perspective on SSI and as being either interactive or non-interactive. The results elucidate how teachers can make purposeful use of different communicative approaches to facilitate students’ decision-making while promoting complexity in their reasoning. The results also show how teachers can promote cumulativity , in terms of their recognition of students’ contributions to discussions. It is proposed that teachers can use the concept of communicative approaches as an analytical tool to reflect on and develop aspects of teaching practice in relation to the goals that they wish to achieve.