Abstract:

Introduction:
Economics education for children still needs to be deepened at the theoretical level by researchers investigating the specific educational issues of childhood. The few existing studies are mostly practical and based on a psychological approach focused on behaviours and decision-making skills development in children. The research in this field usually does not go into the epistemological issues of this specific education so relevant for human life. Globalized capitalism is nowadays rooted in people’s mentalities, behaviours and lifestyles. Capitalism, in its feature of “bio-capitalism”, has profoundly impacted the models and systems of early childhood education. Within this frame, economics education is getting more and more relevant.

Problem:
The debate on bio-capitalism influencing all the ages of human life has generated an extensive debate among scholars of social sciences. While the advent of capitalism and globalization, on the one hand, has underlined the relevance of economics as a science for the understanding of contemporary cultural and social phenomena, bio-capitalism, on the other hand, has highlighted the need for rethinking from a critical point of view many principles that inspire current economics education. Our study aims to reconstruct the scenario mentioned above regarding early childhood economics education by showing the ambiguity of this education.

Methods:
The first part of the study will be carried out by taking into account the most up-to-date scholarly literature regarding the issue of early economic education in early childhood and its interpretation from a critical perspective. In this phase, we will utilize a dialectical and historical-comparative research methodology supported by brief expositions of theories of authors who have investigated the main topics the article is about. In the second phase, by data mining and a research methodology based on text analysis, we will analyze some text in Russian and Italian on economics education for children.

Results:
From the data collected and interpretations performed, we will able to sketch a critical model of interpretation for early childhood economics education. This model is expected to have a practical application that can lead to the development of good practices in early childhood economics education in the preschool curriculum. The article will conclude with the identification of a list of principles that can serve as guidelines for the outlining of an authentically human economics education within which the child and not money or corporations’ interests be the very focal point of education.

Keywords:

Economic education, early childhood, preschool, curriculum, text analysis.