Fostering Attitudes and Communicative Self-Efficacy Through Structured Group Discussions on Environmental Socioscientific Issues

Group discussions enable argumentative development and are considered as a core strategy for addressing socioscientific issues (SSIs). Yet, in SSIs, students often struggle to navigate the decision-making process. This has increased interest in scaffolds that make both the process and the factual and normative complexity manageable. Although effects on the discussion process have been researched, little is known about whether structured discussion influences dispositions for future engagement, including discussion-related attitudes, communicative self-efficacy, and environmental attitudes. Therefore, this study investigated group discussions on three SSIs with 56 secondary students from four 7th- and 8th-grade classes at two German schools. In the experimental condition, discussions were supported by a scaffold called Target-Mat, which visually structured the discussion steps; the control condition used a familiar pro–con table. Pre–post questionnaires measured communicative self-efficacy, discussion-related attitudes, and environmental attitudes; group × time interactions were analyzed using a mixed ANOVA. Results showed significant group × time interactions for communicative self-efficacy (partial η2 = 0.09), discussion-related attitudes (partial η2 = 0.09), and environmental opinion (partial η2 = 0.08), but not environmental emotion. These findings indicate that structured discussions can positively influence relevant dispositions for future participation. The implications for teaching and educational research are discussed.