FORUM Identities, social representations and critical thinking Ramo ´n Lo ´pez-Facal Æ Marı ´a Pilar Jime ´nez-Aleixandre Received: 8 May 2008 / Accepted: 8 May 2008 / Published online: 4 June 2008 Ó Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2008 Abstract This comment on L. Simonneaux and J. Simonneaux paper focuses on the role of identities in dealing with socio-scientific issues. We argue that there are two types of identities (social representations) influencing the students’ positions: On the one hand their social representations of the bears’ and wolves’ identities as belonging to particular countries (Slovenia versus France for bears, France and Italy for wolves), in other words, as having national identities; on the other hand representations of their own identities as belonging to the field of agricultural practitioners, and so sharing this socio-professional identity with shepherds and breeders, as opposed to ecologists. We discuss how these representations of identities influenced students’ reasoning and argumentation, blocking in some cases the evaluation of evidence. Implications for developing critical thinking and for dealing with SSI in the classrooms are outlined. Keywords Identities Á Social representations Á Critical thinking Á Evidence evaluation Resumo executivo 1 Este comento a Simonneaux e Simonneaux ce ´ntrase no papel das identidades no traballo con cuestio ´ns socio-cientı ´ficas. Discu ´tense dous tipos de identidades que influ ´en nas posicio ´ns dos estudantes: (a) as su ´as representacio ´ns de osos e lobos, aos que atribu ´en identidades nacionais, adscribı ´ndoos a Eslovenia e Francia (osos), ou Francia e Italia R. Lo ´pez-Facal Dpt. Historia Contempora ´nea, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Pza. Universidade, 1, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain M. P. Jime ´nez-Aleixandre (&) Dpt. Didactica das Ciencias Experimentais, Universidade de Santiago de Compostela, Av. Xoan XXIII s.n., 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain e-mail: ddmaleix@usc.es 1 The executive summary is written in Galician, one of the four co-official languages in Spain, and the official language of the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela. Linguistically it belongs to the Portuguese Languages. 123 Cult Stud of Sci Educ (2009) 4:689–695 DOI 10.1007/s11422-008-9134-9