Sharedthinking: a social identity approach to critical thinking

Could a group‐level approach to critical thinking offer advantages over individual‐level strategies? To explore such an idea, this paper offers a social‐psychological perspective on critical thinking. This is extended to provide guidelines towards the design of an ‘identity‐mediated practice.’ A case study from a School of Education is provided to show these ideas implemented in the group-relevant context of student‐teacher placements. Finally, an emergent identity‐mediated practice called SharedThinking is presented. This work was initially developed from doctoral research at the University of Glasgow and supported by the Kelvin‐Smith Scholarship Fund (Bowskill et al., 2010, Bowskill, 2009, Bowskill, 2013).