5th and 8th grade pupils’ and teachers’ perceptions of the relationships between teaching methods, classroom ethos, and positive affective attitudes towards learning mathematics in Japan

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positive affective attitudes did not seem to be affected by their reported attempts to
enhance pupils’ general self-concept and mathematics self-concept. The extent of
deployment of particular teaching methods also did not seem to be affected by these
attempts.

7.2: Pupils’ and teachers’ attribution of pupils’ mathematics performance

Pupils ’ perceptions

In the questionnaire, both 5^th and 8^th graders who responded as being Very good, Good
or OK at mathematics were asked to choose one alternative of six as a positive
attribution oftheir success.

These alternatives were:

• Ability (I am clever enough to do well at Maths classes),

• Effort (I try hard to do well at Maths classes),

• Luck (It is just lucky for me to do well at Maths classes),

• Teachersupport (I have enough support from the teacher in mathematics classes),
• Home support (I have enough support from my parents or juku teachers to do well),
• Easy task (Tasks and tests are easy in Maths classes).

A space was left so that pupils could write an alternative reason for their success in
mathematics for 8^th graders.

Approximately one third of pupils of both age groups attributed their success in
mathematics learning to effort. 5^th graders were more likely to attribute their success to
support from others such as home support or support from the teacher in mathematics
classes than 8^th graders, while 8^th graders were more likely to attribute their success in
mathematics learning to luck than 5^th graders. Few from each grade attributed their
success in mathematics learning to ability or easiness of the task provided. Few 8^th
graders expressed attributions of their success in learning mathematics in their own
words. Of those that did the attributions were ‘I am interested in maths’ (N=42, 3.7%), ‘I
learned maths a lot in my early years’ (N=7, 0.6%), and the ‘Learning materials are good
for promoting my understanding’ (N=1, 0.1%) (see Table 7.2.1).

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