The integration of socioscientific issues (SSI) in science education requires teachers to manage open-ended discussions in which multiple perspectives, including students’ personal viewpoints, are considered. While this is recognised as a complex task for science teachers, research on teachers’ management of classroom discourse regarding SSI is scarce. This study aims at providing knowledge significant for the advancement of classroom practices suitable for dealing with multiple perspectives, including students’ contributions. The concept of communicative approach and the concept of position were used as tools to analyse transcripts of two teachers’ management of whole class discussions on four different SSI. The teachers’ use of different communicative approaches for different purposes was analysed. How certain features of the discourse, such as the types of questions used, functioned to position the students as contributors to the discussions was also examined. The results show that multiple perspectives, including students’ contributions, were recognized through a complex interplay between communicative approaches that made available contrasting student positions. The results indicate that strategies to build instruction on students’ contributions are particularly important to promote students’ participation in classroom discussions on SSI. The results also show that the interplay between questions that request students’ personal viewpoints and questions that are targeted towards decision-making is important to consider in relation to the aims of SSI-based education.