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

225

Table 7.2.1: Percentages of pupils attributing their good or average at mathematics to
the following factors

5^th and 8^th graders who reported themselves as Poor or Very poor at mathematics were
asked to choose one possible reason for failure from six alternatives: lack of ability, lack
of effort, lack of luck, lack of teacher support, lack of home support and task difficulty. A
space was left for 8^th graders to write an alternative reason for being poor at
mathematics. The majority of 8^th graders attributed their being poor at mathematics to
lack of effort. Effort-based attribution in failure was found more at 8^th grade than 5^th
grade. 5^th graders were more likely to attribute their being poor at mathematics to lack of
ability. Effort-based attributions of 8^th graders and ability-based attributions of 5^th graders
manifested among the pupils perceiving themselves poor at mathematics were greater
than for pupils perceiving themselves good or average at mathematics. Slightly more
than one tenth of 5^th graders attributed their being poor at mathematics to task difficulty.
Fewer 8^th graders gave task-based attributions. Pupils from both age groups attributing
their being poor at mathematics to lack of luck, lack of teacher support or lack of home
support were very few. Approximately one tenth of 8^th graders described their attribution
of failure in their own words. Those attributions were ‘I am not interested in mathematics
(3.3%)’, ‘I often make tiny mistakes (2.7%)’ ‘I can’t develop my understanding (1.1%)’, ‘I
don’t know how to learn mathematics effectively (0.6%)’ and ‘others (2.7%)’ (see Table
7.2.2).

Table 7.2.2: Percentages of pupils attributing their poor at mathematics to the following
factors

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