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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Jones et al. (1972) explained that the existence or absence of distinctiveness
information for actors and observers, would induce the anticipated actor-situation and
observer-person inferential biases. Fiske et al. (1991) suggested that actor-observer
differences occurred because actors base their inferences on environments, and
observers base their inferences on the person because s/he is prominent. This disparate
information leads the two parties to incongruous judgements.

Some earlier research studied the effects of controllable and uncontrollable factors of
attribution on their affects towards learning, outcome expectancy for future learning and
consequent behaviour outcomes of learning among Japanese students. Nasu (1990)
suggested that attribution of failure in mathematics term examinations to lack of daily
effort was positively related to feelings of regret, which led to positive learning behaviour
and improvement of results in next term’s examination. In contrast, attribution of failure
to lack of ability was positively related to perceptions of incompetence, which led to
negative learning behaviour and decreased performance. Achievement-related affect
arising from attributional styles was related to learning behaviour and improvement of
performance, but attribution styles themselves and the results of previous examination
were not directly related to learning behaviour or improvement of performance.

Higuchi et al. (1986) showed that Japanese 4^th-6^th graders categorised as helpless
tended to avoid attributing their success to ability, effort and task easiness, while they
attributed their failure to lack of luck and lack of ability rather than lack of effort. Those
categorised as self-displaying attributed failure to lack of luck or poor health. These
children could not set up an appropriate level of goal attainment and perceived their level
of success as low, although they had similar actual task achievement as pupils who had
other attributional styles. Koizumi (1991) showed that Japanese 5^th graders with higher
academic self-concept attributed their success to ability, while those with lower
academic self-concept attributed their success to task easiness or luck and their failure
to lack of ability. The effect of effort-based attribution on mathematics self-concept was
not clear in the case of either success or failure in Koizumi’s (1991) study, probably
because of the higher percentage of effort-based attribution than other attributional
styles in both success and failure. Children making effort-based attributions were likely
to do so for both success and failure, while ability-based attributions of success and
failure were separate constructs. Taketsuna et al. (1990) reported that Japanese 7^th

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