Critical thinking is a central aspect of analysing societal issues of various kinds, which is at the forefront of social science education in both primary and secondary education. This presentation will focus on progression in this ability. The most well-known theories developed to describe progression of knowledge in educational settings are general (Dolin, 2013). Subject specific models for knowledge progression are less developed, not least in social science. Teachers of social science subjects tend to use a simplified version of Bloom’s taxonomy (1956), but also an image of students moving from the familiar to the unfamiliar, when describing knowledge progression in their subject (Christensen et.al., 2006). However, using Bloom’s taxonomy often leads to a separation of the ability to reason critically from understanding of facts (Case, 2005), while empirical studies indicate that this contradicts how students develop critical thinking in social science (Case, 2013; Nygren et.al., 2018; Tväråna, 2019). Based on four studies concerning students’ critical thinking in relation to societal issues, we would in this presentation like to discuss aspects of progression. We compare the results from studies of critical thinking in relation to issues of distributive and retributive justice (Tväråna, 2019), power (Tväråna et al., in progress), economic value (Björklund et. al., in progress) and global political issues (Jägerskog et.al., in progress). Three of the studies include several different age groups (from the earlier years of elementary school to upper secondary students), which enables an analysis of aspects of progression both in terms of the meaning of a more or less qualified critical social science thinking and in relation to different age groups. The results offer a contribution to practice as well as theory in terms of implications for teaching and a potential deepening of the understanding of progression in social science education.