Social representations of Europe among 10-16 year old British children

Abstract

The study described in this paper adopted a distinctive research strategy founded on social representations theory (Emler & Ohana, 1993; Moscovici, 1988). The specific aim was to examine how different social anchors indicating a belonging to specific social groups (i.e. social class, travel experience and parental attitudes), in addition to age, affect British children’s social representations of Europe. The participants were 190 children aged 10-16 years old from southern England. The knowledge and beliefs components of the children’s social representations were assessed using five different methods, including two map interpretation tasks, a naming task, a photograph evaluation task and informal interviewing. The results showed that the children’s social class group helps mediate the develop of both the knowledge and beliefs components of children’s social representations of Europe. However, the other potential forms of social anchoring, namely parental attitude and travel experience, had an insignificant effect on the children’s social representations. Age differences were apparent in the children’s knowledge of Europe, but not in relation to the content of the children’s beliefs regarding Europe. The results suggest that future research is needed into the precise social processes that cause social class and age differences in children’s social representations of Europe. It is argued that this research would benefit greatly from a closer relationship between developmental psychology and social psychology.