Overcoming Student Fears Surrounding Class Discussions

Many teachers recognize that the most rewarding classroom moments are those filled with student-led, active discussion. Socratic seminars are a powerful method for achieving this, as they are participatory, student-centered dialogues driven by peer-to-peer questioning rather than teacher-led instruction. For a Socratic seminar to be truly effective, it must be accessible so that every student has a voice.

Creating this dynamic dialogue requires intentional strategies that address common student anxieties about participation and empower all learners to feel safe and capable of contributing their unique voice. The strategies that follow support relational, inclusive, and inquiry-based dialogue, enabling all students to thrive in these collaborative learning environments—even when you’re not using a Socratic seminar.

5 Common student worries—and how to address them

1. Thinking on the fly, or improvised thinking. You might hear students say something like “I stutter” or “I can’t always communicate clearly” or “The conversation moved on, and my point is irrelevant now.”

In this case, you can teach students to write down or highlight one idea from their notes that they can rehearse ahead of time to say in class (even if they just read it off the page). If students are nervous, they can plan with you ahead of time when they want to contribute, and you can sneakily choose them to speak “randomly.”

Also, conversations don’t have to be linear: If a student’s contribution (even one that they planned) relates back to a previous point in the discussion, encourage them to still say it—then you as the teacher can do the work relating it back to where you currently are in the conversation.

Finally, you can teach students to share the space: This can often be redirected from the teacher, for example, by saying, “Let’s wait for three hands to go up from people we haven’t heard from yet,” so that it isn’t the same extroverted or high-processing-speed students replying.

2. Contributing something new. You might hear students say something like “I just agree with what everyone has said” or “I don’t have anything unique to contribute.”

Here, encourage students to still verbally state their agreement: “I want to say that I agree with Sarah’s point” or “I love what Juan said about ____,” which is still active participation. Students learn here to affirm their classmates (and it might have been a big deal for them to share this).

Encourage students to state specifically what they agree or disagree with: They probably have one or two points they really liked or don’t connect with, as opposed to agreeing or disagreeing with everything that everyone has said.

Finally, you can provide students a chance to offer a counter-argument, or what they think someone with a different perspective might say even if they don’t believe in it (this can help others strengthen their ideas and helps depersonalize the counter-argument). For example, “Could an argument be made that ____?”

3. Being in the spotlight. You might hear students say something like “I’m just more of a listener than a talker.”

While some students may not feel comfortable participating verbally at the beginning of discussion, they can be shown nonverbal ways that signal active listening to their classmates (e.g., nodding, thumbs-up).

Students may tell you the reason they don’t want to speak is because of a social and emotional challenge (such as severe social anxiety or the feeling, “I don’t deserve to be here”). This is usually less a participation or communication issue, and likely symptomatic of something deeper.

Here, you can encourage developing tools of mindful reflection to help students get curious around these cognitive distortions. I differentiate here by asking students to write a reflection about what they believe about participation and how it feels in their body, and where they first developed those beliefs. Together, you and the student can make a reflection assignment in lieu so they can still show you their learning and thinking on participation.

Finally, students can show you their class notes from the discussion, demonstrating their active listening—an integral component of academic discussion. This should not be a summary of what is said, but rather, their own thoughts in written format in real time that show they are responding to the discussion happening in the room.

4. Participating too much. You might hear students say something like “I can’t stop talking and always want to share my opinion or experience!”

Provide moments in the discussion for students to take a moment of reflection to self-assess if they have already offered their opinion in that class, and refocus their effort to respond to their classmates and build them up. This might look like “Let’s take a second and take an inventory of our participation so far. Who haven’t we heard from?”

Without calling anyone out, remind the group to reflect on whether they are simply sharing their experience (conversation absorbing) versus asking questions and responding to others (conversation generating). This helps students refocus from “grabbing the mic” to amplifying their peers’ voices by “passing the mic.” You might prompt them to say something like “Alex in our group had a great idea about ____ that I really found insightful. Do you want to add to that, Alex?” or showing nonverbal active listening such as thumbs-up signaling when a peer speaks.

Finally, remind students that participation isn’t about quantity, it is about quality: Are you speaking only from personal experiences? Do you take up a lot of air time from your peers? Do you relate your responses to others, the readings, and the question at hand, or are you just sharing your opinion?

5. Being incorrect. You might hear students say something like “I get lost remembering what we are talking about!” or “I don’t understand the concepts enough to share” or “I’m scared I will get the wrong answer.”

Remind students that asking questions counts just as much as providing answers and responses. You can teach students prompts like “Can you remind me of the question we are responding to?” or “Can we come back to the question?” or “Can you write the question on the board?”

Celebrating confusion or questioning is important to building a psychologically safe classroom where expressing confusion is celebrated as a natural part of learning something new. In my class, I offer an M&M every time someone stumbles through a response. They have come to call these M&Ms for “Making Mistakes” and “Moving from Mind to Mouth.”

Try having students in small groups do a mini-dialogue before coming back to whole class dialogue. Explain that you’d like a student to act as speaker and to share their group’s conversation highlights. This helps mitigate improvised thinking and fear of being the only one having “the wrong idea.“

Finally, encourage an experimenter’s mindset: At its core, Socratic discussion should emulate a learning lab, so we actually want “wrong” answers and draft thinking. Participation isn’t about getting it right, it is about communicating your ideas and taking risks on the chance we might strike insight through scholarly discourse. When students get something wrong, you can reward it. You can also encourage students to frame responses as “It’s just a hunch, but…” or “I am open to being wrong, but I was thinking…” or “In my experience…,” which can help deflate authority and preface the contribution as experimental or draft thinking.