Exploring Children Attitudes towards Mathematics in Primary School: methodological concerns and technical choices

In recent years social science research has made tremendous strides in measuring educational inequality, appreciating children’s position as agentic beings and acknowledging their expertise. Nevertheless, in many studies children only appear as respondents rather than subjects actively interpreting and shaping the research process. Special attention has been given to the tailoring of survey methodology to avoid bias in estimates due to children’s misreporting and nonresponse as well as to informant consent procedures. This paper aims to discuss methodological and ethical issues arising in doing research with children in the educational field, by illustrating the main preliminary results of a research project against summer learning loss in primary school, named MATES (MAtematica per Tutti in EState). The project proposes an interdisciplinary investigation of summer learning loss in mathematics by quantifying it and identifying specific mitigating factors and looking at the connection between cognitive, non-cognitive and emotional competencies. We planned and conducted a survey and a series of focus groups with primary school children (8-9 years of age) in two metropolitan areas, Milan and Naples. In this contribution, we share our initial rationales and methodologically reflect on our experiences in order to derive recommendations for conducting research with children within schools. We concentrate on the dynamics of interaction between researchers and children, the construction of research instruments, and the management of school setting, in the light of variability of teachers stance. We conclude by outlining strengths and weaknesses of both techniques, highlighting the difficulties encountered by the researchers in facilitating children's participation and ensuring a non-coercive research environment.