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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younger children to answer than a rating system. MCI is also suitable for junior high
school students. The Learning Environment Inventory, Classroom Environment Scale
and Individualised Classroom Environment Questionnaire are also used for secondary
school students. However, these inventories seemed unsuitable for this study, because
of the large numbers of statements. The employment of MCI for both levels appeared to
be beneficial in increasing the compatibility between the questionnaire designs for
elementary and secondary school pupils. The internal consistency reliability of MCI was
reported as being from 0.62 to .78, the discriminant validity of MCI was from 0.10 to
0.26, and its ability to differentiate between classrooms in terms of five domains was at
the significance level, p<. 01. These results show the high validity of this inventory.

Attempts were made to ensure high reliability and validity of standardised instructions in
the process of translation, as was the case for SDQ-I and SDQ-II mentioned above.
However, two of the original questions appeared difficult for Japanese children to
understand, in the pilot studies. The sentence ‘Some of the pupils in my class are my
friends’ in MCI connotes a negative meaning. However, the direct translation of this
sentence into Japanese does not necessarily communicate the negative meaning. In the
pilot study, children who responded ‘Yes’ to this statement were often likely to respond
‘Yes’ also to the statement indicating positive feelings about friendships in mathematics
classes, such as ‘In my class everybody is my friend’. For this reason, this statement
was altered to ‘Few pupils in my mathematics classes are my friends’. ‘Only the smart
pupils can do their work’ was also difficult for children to understand. The word
‘smartness’ is not common among Japanese children who are accustomed to value
everyone’s mastery learning (Stevenson, 1992). Therefore, this sentence was altered to
‘Only certain pupils can always manage their work’. In addition, to ensure asking pupils
specifically about the classroom ethos of their mathematics classes the wording ‘In my
Maths class’ was included in every sentence. The statements were ordered as in the
original. Table 3.2.5 shows the statements according to five categories.

Table 3.2.5: Statements to ask pupils about their perceptions of classroom ethos
Satisfaction

The pupils in my Maths class enjoy their work.
Some pupils are not happy in my Maths class.
Children seem to like this Maths class.

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