Abstract:

Educating for economic citizenship has become an increasingly urgent challenge in a global context marked by rapid transformations, pervasive uncertainty, and widening social inequalities. Fostering a broad-based economic culture means equipping students with critical tools to understand contemporary realities and to act as informed, responsible citizens capable of contributing to a more equitable and peaceful society.

International, national, and local education policies are increasingly recognizing economic education as an essential component of citizenship education from early childhood onward. Italy, in 2024, formally introduced economic and financial education as a thematic pillar of citizenship education beginning in primary school. However, teachers still have limited access to specific professional development opportunities and to clear guidelines on how to integrate these topics effectively into classroom practice. Moreover, to design educational models that are genuinely inclusive and oriented toward social justice, teachers must be aware of pupils’ prior knowledge, their needs, and the socioeconomic contexts in which they live.

This paper presents an empirical study conducted in Northern Italy on primary school children’s naïve economic theories. The research involved a stratified sample of 200 pupils aged 6, 8, and 10 years, living in both rural and urban areas, who participated in semi-structured focus groups addressing three conceptual domains widely identified in the literature as foundational for the development of more advanced competencies: money and currency; prices and payments; income and work. A Qualitative Content Analysis enabled the construction of a coding frame that integrated both concept-driven and data-driven categories, with the aim of identifying differences linked to age and everyday context.

The study seeks to provide teachers with tools to design economic education pathways aligned with pupils’ cognitive development. Understanding children’s spontaneous representations—often shaped by their family and social environments—constitutes a crucial starting point for developing educational practices capable of reducing inequalities and fostering active, informed participation. From this perspective, educational research becomes a space where knowledge, equity, and peace intersect, contributing to the formation of compassionate and responsible citizens.

Keywords:

Economic citizenship, Social justice, Children’s naïve economic theories, Primary education.