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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and differences between children arise from environmental factors, especially the extent
to which adults support children’s autonomous development Peak (1991) describes how
Japanese teachers praise children as jozu (skillful) not only in relation to achievement
but also in relation to attitudes such as concentration. This praise informs children that
positive attitudes are developed through practice, rather than as a function of personality
or the child’s tendencies.

Some research has reported on Japanese students’ incremental idea of intelligence. The
TIMSS results in 1994 showed that the percentage of 4^th and 8^th graders who agreed
that some children have innate mathematical ability in Japan was lower than in other
countries. Stevenson et al. (1992) reported that Japanese 5^th graders disagreed strongly
with the idea that test results showed the natural ability of the performer, and Japanese
mothers were reported to make effort-based attributions of their children’s school
performance. Kimura (1989) reported that Japanese 5^th graders believed that everyone
had the same level of mathematics ability, although some research reported that
Japanese children’s mathematics performance was positively related to their intelligence
test scores (e.g. Uttal, 1988).

Holding an incremental idea of intelligence affects attributional styles, belief systems and
behaviour outcomes. First, it leads to effort-based attributional styles, as explained in the
previous section. Secondly, it values perseverance for achieving goals. Blinco’s (1991)
study showed that Japanese 1^st graders, especially children who received home∕family
encouragement and support, persisted more in difficult tasks than American
counterparts. Stevenson et al. (1992) showed that Japanese 5^th graders showed greater
persistence when faced with a difficult problem than their American counterparts and
were more likely to prefer solving fewer problems with higher accuracy. However,
children’s perseverance on a task may not produce confidence, satisfaction and positive
outcome expectancy for future tasks (Stevenson et al., 1992). Horikawa (1991) reported
that Japanese mothers tended to set higher standards and required higher achievement
for their satisfaction than American mothers. This tendency became stronger as children
proceeded through the grades. Japanese 5^th graders believed less that their teaches
and parents were happy with their mathematics performance than American 5^th graders.

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