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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described how a child is expected to accomplish a given role in a group. The promotion
of co-operation and interpersonal skills is encouraged in classrooms to develop a sense
of pride in effort as a group member (Lewis, 1995a.b). Lynn’s (1988) study mentioned
above, reports that the entrance examination system encourages students to co-operate
to achieve a common goal and promotes pupils’ motivation based on Japanese
children’s interdependent view of self. Some studies (e.g. Zander 1983) have shown that
the Japanese can raise their self-esteem and are motivated more when they know that
their effort will contribute to their group rather than to personal accomplishment. This is
in contrast to the Americans who work for their personal good. While some perceive that
individuality is sacrificed to group cohesiveness in Japan (Stevenson, et al. 1992a),
others see that co-operation is the appropriate way of expressing and enhancing the self
in Japanese cultural contexts where the self is considered in relation to harmony in
human relationships (White, 1986).

Hazel et al. (1991) proposed that in Japan children were striving to achieve the goals of
family and teachers with whom they are reciprocally interdependent. Samimy et al.
(1994) postulated that Japanese children’s perseverance in learning is formed through
mothers’ unconditional love (amae) and a reciprocal obligation towards such mothers’
love (giri). Japanese 5^th graders believed that learning mathematics was important for
themselves, but at the same time, they felt good about pleasing their teachers and
parents by good performance. For them, external reasons for good performance were
not reward and punishment, as in the case of American children (Hamilton, 1989).
Stenlund (1995) reported that Japanese teachers felt encouraged by student enthusiasm
and responsiveness, the emotional bond between students and teachers and seeing the
growth and development of students, while they felt discouraged by shared-blame
problems such as poor student-teacher communication. Iwai (1986) showed that good
relationships with peers and family members, and satisfaction with mathematics
performance, seemed to affect Japanese 7^th and 8^th graders’ self-esteem more than self-
assessed and teacher-assessed mathematics performance. However, the results of
TIMSS showed that the majority of 8^th graders expressed their disagreement with the
statement that they were trying to get higher marks to make their parents happy.

Although the self-concept of Japanese students, especially younger children, has rarely
been studied, such research as there is has reported that the general self-concept of

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