The purpose of this study was to clarify how social studies education research has debated over the formation of national identity. By organizing the development of previous studies, three issues were noted. First, developmental and practical studies have consistently denied national identity as essentialism. Second, there has been an overemphasis in practice on the transformation from essentialism to constructivism. Third, in the framework that captures the relationship between social studies education and national identity, "essentialism" and "civic identity" have been emphasized. By overcoming these challenges, we have proposed four positions of "mobilization," "dismantling," "participation," and "criticism" as a framework for capturing national identity education in social studies education. By taking this framework as a viewpoint, I clarified that Japanese social studies education research has been limited to the demand for "participation" while advancing the discussion from "mobilization" to "dismantling.