Grounded opinion forming processes – an underused learning frame for socioscientific issues instruction

Teaching science today isn’t just about facts—it’s about preparing students to make sense of a world shaped by controversy, uncertainty, misinformation and competing values. This theory-informed perspective paper makes the case for centering “grounded opinion-forming processes”—an important yet underexplored learning outcome of science education. Socioscientific issues (SSI), real-world complex problems, offer a powerful context for fostering this competency. We argue that an instructional framing on developing students’ capacity to form independent, well-reasoned, “grounded opinions”—distinct from formal argumentation or structured decision making—can help empower students to become reflective and responsible participants in society. We define a “grounded opinion” as an evaluative judgement that integrates reasoning, emotions, values, culture and lived experiences, and prior knowledge that is rooted in self-reflection and shaped by contextual influences, and we compare it to other commonly emphasized SSI teaching frames. We use cognitive, psychology and social psychology theory to describe different ideas about how people form opinions, and we argue that these theoretical lenses should inform instructional approaches in SSI instruction, including providing support for students while they integrate across reasoning, emotions, values, culture and lived experiences. We conclude by outlining affordances in classrooms when framed around grounded opinion forming processes and call for the development of detailed instructional models to support educators in fostering important SSI learning outcomes.