ABSTRACT
As John Dewey’s well-known treatise makes clear, education and learning are not just central processes in group life – they are the central processes through which group life endures. Accordingly, it makes sense that any psychological analysis of group life should have a concern with education at its core. Education-based learning is a fundamentally collaborative endeavour that centres on the capacity for individuals to participate in self-development through more or less constructive engagement with instructors and instructional systems. Social identification is an important determinant of how students treat others and how they feel as a result. While mutual identification is critical for education, equally important is the question of what exactly teachers and students are identifying with. Although social identities are psychological constructs derived from internalised group memberships, it is important to recognise that they do not relate only to the internal workings of individual minds.
