Children’s perspectives on achievement and assessment: findings from a qualitative study

Abstract This article reflects on children’s orientations towards achievement and assessment in primary education. Against the backdrop of shifting policies on assessment in Italy the study investigates how children navigate achievement as a socially embedded institutional practice. Anchored in the sociology of knowledge and reconstructive educational research, the study draws on 35 narrative interviews with third-grade students across six primary schools. Data was analysed using the Documentary Method to reconstruct children’s collective experiential knowledge and orientation frameworks. The findings reveal that children actively engage with institutional role expectations and see themselves as contributors to the joint constitution of achievement through social practices. Achievement is experienced as something that must be made visible—both materially and immaterially—and negotiated in intergenerational relationships shaped by recognition, trust, and power asymmetries. A sense-genetic typology was derived, illustrating how children variously orient themselves toward institutional rules and practices. Across all cases, children display implicit institutional knowledge and demonstrate agency in navigating their dual roles as students and children.