Building for Everyone: Kindergarten Children’s Emerging Understanding of Taxation Through Storybook Reading and Construction Play

Abstract

Young children are often viewed as too young to understand abstract civic and economic concepts such as taxation. Yet early childhood research suggests that complex ideas can become meaningful when they are grounded in story, play, dialogue, and children’s everyday experiences. This qualitative instructional case study examined how eight kindergarten children (ages 4–5) in a public kindergarten classroom in South Korea made sense of taxation through interactive storybook reading, a block-based contribution activity, construction play, drawing, and voting. Data sources included classroom dialogue, teacher field notes, video recordings, photographs, and children’s drawings. Inductive, reflexive thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2006, 2021) indicated that children (a) described taxation as a shared community resource, (b) distinguished personal benefit from public benefit, (c) connected taxes to community needs and public goods, and (d) participated in democratic decision-making about how shared resources should be used. Analysis also documented variation among the children, including instances in which children reasoned from personal benefit, revised their responses following teacher prompts, or reminded and corrected one another. Findings suggest that, when introduced through developmentally appropriate and play-based pedagogy, taxation may serve as an accessible entry point for young children’s emerging civic and economic reasoning. The study offers practical implications for early childhood educators who wish to support children’s emerging understandings of fairness, shared responsibility, public resources, and democratic participation.