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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graders attributing failure to task difficulty had low outcome expectancy for their next
examination.

However, Covington’s (1979) self-worth theory proposed that learners would attribute
their failure to lack of effort in order to maintain a self-concept of high ability. Some
studies with Japanese children reported such an effect of effort-based attribution in
failure. For instance, Sakurai (1989) showed that Japanese 6^th graders with higher levels
of hopelessness were less likely to attribute their success to ability and were more likely
to attribute their failure to effort. It was suggested that attributing failure to effort
prevented children from experiencing the depression that might occur from attributing
failure to ability, although children with higher levels of hopelessness might believe that
effort did not lead to good results. Sugiura (1996) showed that the attribution Offailure to
lack of effort was positively related to outcome expectancy for Japanese 5^th-6^th graders
with a low level of helplessness, but not for those with a high level of helplessness who
did not understand the meaning of making effort.

Some studies have suggested that luck is perceived as an internal factor in some
Japanese cultural contexts. This is different from Weiner’s (1986) perspective, which
defined luck (chance) as an external factor influenced by the environment rather than an
individual trait. Kashiwagi (1986) proposed that luck would be more internalised as a
personal trait for Japanese participants, and that their view of their own effort and luck
together would be influential. She found that Japanese students attributed learning
outcomes to both effort and luck. Little et al. (1997) found that Tokyo elementary school
children responded that they did not know the reasons for success or failure in school
performance. They postulated that this might occur because Tokyo children viewed
unknown factors as fatelike and not because classroom practices lacked feedback
information.

Some Japanese young children try to keep high self-esteem by ascribing their failure to
external causes. For instance, Masuda (1994) showed that Japanese lower achievers in
11^th grade who ascribed external and unstable causes also maintained high self-esteem,
while high achievers ascribing internal and stable causes had high self-esteem.
However, some research suggested that Japanese participants are not accustomed to
have self-saving system. Hazel (1991) described, as found in Japanese culture, the

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