Children’s understanding of market forces

Swedish Upper Secondary School Students’ Conceptions of Negative Environmental Impact and Pricing

“…Earlier research [12,14] on young peoples" explanations on how price is generated, describes it to be influenced by the intrinsic value of a good, demand for the good, supply of the good or the relationship between these two mechanisms. This interaction is also presented as something 12-year-olds managed consistently [11] when interviewed about different scenarios in short stories on price change. The students in our sample generally used much less sophisticated thinking about price in relation to environmental issues than has been observed more generally in the literature on conceptions of price.…”

“…The first is that conceptions of any particular phenomenon can be divided into a small number of qualitatively distinct ways of understanding that phenomenon. This principle is widely followed in conceptual change [10] and social psychology [11] research. Global reliance on markets to address resource issues places conceptions of price at the center of the environmental stage.…”

“…We investigated these beliefs through a second research question: do students believe that negative environmental effects should be reflected in prices of goods that generate negative environmental impacts and, if so, how do they reflect those? Whilst there is substantial literature on students" conceptions of price [10][11][12], this research has largely ignored the way in which students relate prices to environmental impact. This may be partly because the products used in these studies (e.g., a bun, a toy and housing) are not obviously associated in the public mind with environmental impacts.…”

Students' conceptions of price, value and opportunity cost: some implications for future research

“…Social psychologists (for example, Berti & Grivet, 1990;Thompson & Siegler, 2000;Leiser & Halachmi, 2006) have investigated younger children's (largely 6-12-year-olds') understanding of price by presenting brief fictional stories and asking the children questions such as, 'What do you think will happen next?' Students' understanding of price has also featured strongly in the work of researchers in the phenomenography or variation theory tradition (for example, Dahlgren, 1984;Pong, 1998;Marton & Pong, 2005;Pang & Marton, 2005;Marton & Pang, 2008).…”

“¡Chalinas a 20 Pesos!”: Children’s Economic Ideas Developed Through Selling

“…Of the studies that do exist on children's developing economic understandings, most focus on children's grasp of formal economic concepts taught in school, such as supply and demand (Berti & Bombi, 1981;Berti & Grivet, 1990;Leiser & Halachmi, 2006;Siegler & Thompson, 1998;Thompson & Siegler, 2000). This exclusive focus on school-based economic ideas limits our knowledge of the economic understandings that children may be developing in out-of-school practices.…”