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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The study also examined pupils’ reported frequency of experiencing different teaching
methods and their affective attitudes towards learning mathematics in relation to their
enjoyment, motivation, sense of security and sense of progress. These features of
pupils’ attitudes towards learning were, as mentioned in chapter one, aspects that
Japanese children currently are perceived to lack. The words employed to communicate
these features on the questionnaire were chosen after discussion with many elementary
and junior high school teachers during the pilot studies. The accessibility of the language
was also checked in the pilot studies with the pupils.

The word ‘enjoyment’ is often used in Japan with reference to learning settings. For
example, the National Institute for Educational Research’s (1990) questionnaire survey
of 4^th graders in mathematics classes, mentioned above, started with the question, ‘Did
you enjoy learning the topic ‘area’ in the individual session?’ The word ‘motivation’ is a
technical term in psychology. The NIER’s (1990) study mentioned above used the words
‘try hard to learn’ when enquiring about children’s motivation. The Japanese expression
‘Ganbaru’ (trying hard), was introduced into the international literature as the word
expressing the Japanese educational ethos (e.g. Stevenson, 1992). The word translated
here as ‘sense of security’ was taken from the sentence ‘schools should be places
where children feel relaxed and comfortable about concentrating on learning’ in the
recommendations of the Curriculum Council (1998). This study adopted this explanation
to express ‘sense of security’. Attempts were made to select words, which
communicated to the pupils that ‘having a sense of progress’ is a term focusing on their
feelings about progress rather than actual progress. Repeated discussion with teachers
and the results of the pilot studies confirmed the high probability of success in
communicating the researcher’s intentions to the pupil participants. The questions
employed in the questionnaire for pupil participants were as follows.

• How often do you have these kinds of learning methods in your mathematics
lessons?

• Do these methods help you to enjoy learning mathematics?

• Do these methods encourage you to try hard in mathematics?

• Do you feel relaxed in learning mathematics by using these particular methods?

• Do you think these methods help you to feel that you are making progress in learning
mathematics?

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