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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attitudes promoted by different teaching methods. These were regressed on
mathematics self-concept.

The responses of 1219 5^th graders perceiving their mathematics learning as successful
were used in the analysis. For them, perceived satisfaction in the classroom predicted
their mathematics self-concept best. General self-concept, deployment of Teacher
explanation and Whole-class discussion, sense of security promoted by Individual work,
motivation promoted by Individual help, attribution of success to ability and perceived
competition in classroom predicted their mathematics self-concept positively to a lesser
extent. Attribution of success to luck or teacher support and deployment of Individual
help made a negative ∞ntribution to predicting pupils’ mathematics self-concept.

The most distinctive finding was that the perceived frequency of the deployment of
Individual help affected mathematics self-concept inversely, while motivation promoted
by this teaching method affected mathematics self-concept positively. The Multiple R
value was .570 and the adjusted R square was .318 (F=41.959, p<. 01). See Table 7.5.1
for details.

Table 7.5.1: The multiple correlation coefficient of stepwise multiple regression of 5^th
graders perceiving their mathematics learning as successful

The responses of 260 5^th graders perceiving their mathematics learning as failing were
analysed, using the same stepwise multiple regression procedure as for students
perceiving their learning as successful. For the students perceiving themselves as

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