Children’s Understanding Economic Relations
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.14712/23362189.2020.1850Keywords:
children’s understanding, conceptual change, semi-structured interview, primary education, circulation of money, fi nancial literacyAbstract
The study introduces the issue of the development of childrenʼs understanding of economic relations in the period of primary education. In-depth interviews focused on ways of raising money for the familyʼs livelihood investigate childrenʼs justifications for different income levels and, more generally, the concept of the circulation of money. It compares the results with similarly focused foreign research from the last 30 years.
Goals: The concepts of partial phenomena of economic life that were identified indicate tendencies in the thinking of primary school pupils and offer starting points for the teaching of primary social science.
Method: Data from semi-structured interviews was processed. The transcripts of the interviews were coded and the childrenʼs concepts were subsequently categorised according to the degree of their complexity and the compatibility of partial ideas.
Results: In both parts of the research, childrenʼs concepts show a tendency to apply their own social experience to the economic sphere. Domain-specific concepts referring to the idea of the labour market or the circulation of money in society were connected to the pupilʼs experience with the employment of parents or to other specific examples more than the development period.
Conclusion: The views of the labour market and the circulation of money that were elicited can contribute to the didactics of social sciences as a starting point for the process of conceptual change. The results offer variants of incomplete views and misconceptions and provide stimuli for the initiation of conceptual change in teaching.
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