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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Overall, few pupils attributed their success to ability or task easiness. For those pupils
that did Individual work was favoured as supporting affect while Teacher explanation and
Reading a textbook were not. 5^th graders attributing success to task easiness favoured
Practical work, and Individual work and help as supporting positive attitudes. 5^th graders
attributing success to ability or task easiness perceived that Practical work and Individual
help positively promoted positive affective attitudes, although they perceived less
frequent deployment of these teaching methods.

The percentage of pupils attributing their success to luck was very low. This attributional
style was reported more among 8^th graders than 5^th graders. Those attributing their
success to luck perceived less frequent deployment of all teaching methods and less
positive affective attitudes promoted by them.

Many pupils perceiving themselves poor at mathematics attributed failure in
mathematics learning to lack of effort; this tendency was particularly strong at 8^th grade.
A nearly equal percentage of younger pupils attributed failure to lack of effort or lack of
ability. Attribution of failure to lack of effort or lack of ability did not seem to affect
perceptions of the effects of or deployment of different teaching methods. Pupils
attributing failure to lack of teacher support believed Teacher explanation did not
promote positive attitudes at both grades.

Most teachers from both age groups gave effort-based attributions for their pupils’
success. Few teachers gave ability-based attributions. Due to the small number of
teacher participants and the inequality of the distributions of teacher participants
according to attributional style, the relationships between teachers’ perceptions of the
attributional styles of their pupils’ and their perceptions of the effects and deployment of
different teaching methods were not examined.

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