Mathematics Achievement of Chinese, Japanese, and American Children: Ten Years Later

Abstract

A decade of heightened emphasis in the United States on mathematics and science education has had little influence on academic achievement or parental attitudes. American elementary school children in 1990 lagged behind their Chinese and Japanese peers to as great a degree as they did in 1980. Comparison of the performance of elementary and secondary school students between 1980 and 1990 reveals a decline from first to eleventh grade in the relative position of American students in mathematics. Parental satisfaction with American students' achievement and education remains high and standards remain low. Innate ability continues to be emphasized by Americans as a basis for achievement. American eleventh graders report more indications of stress than do their Chinese and Japanese counterparts.

Critical analysis of the current approaches to modelling educational effectiveness: The importance of establishing a dynamic model

“…The explanation may be, as Monk (1994) reported, that the relationship is curvilinear: a minimal level of knowledge is necessary for teachers to be effective, but beyond a certain point a negative relation occurs. Similar findings have been reported for the association of self-efficacy beliefs with teacher effectiveness (Schunk 1991;Stevenson, Chen & Lee, 1993) and for the impact of classroom emotional climate and teacher management upon effectiveness. A negative emotional climate usually shows negative correlations but a neutral climate is at least as supportive as a warm climate.…”

Cultural differences in complex addition: Efficient Chinese versus adaptive Belgians and Canadians.

“…Finally, cultural-specific informal factors may also explain cultural differences in math performance (Stevenson, Chen, & Lee, 1993;. Examples of such informal factors are "having parents and peers who hold high standards, believing that the road to success is through effort, having positive attitudes about achievement, studying diligently, and facing less interference with their schoolwork from jobs and informal peer interactions" (Chen & Stevenson, 1995).…”

Development of numerical estimation in Chinese preschool children

“…For example, Dehaene and colleagues (2008) found that their sample of American adults had linear representation of 0-10 symbolic numbers (in English and in Spanish, with the latter being a second language for the participants) and 1-10 dots, but not of 1-100 dots or 1-10 tones, both of which were logarithmically mapped. Third, although we expected similar developmental trends in Chinese children as in Western children, we expected that the shift from logarithmic to linear representation would occur earlier in Chinese children than has been found in American children because of the former's advantage in early mathematics (e.g., Campbell & Xue, 2001;Chen & Stevenson, 1995;Miller et al, 1995;Stevenson et al, 1990Stevenson et al, , 1993. This hypothesis was a downward extension of Siegler and Mu's (2008) findings from kindergarteners to preschoolers.…”

“…This lack of research on young children is especially relevant to Chinese children who begin preschool at 3 years of age and receive formal education about numbers. Previous studies have documented Chinese children's superior performance in mathematics across all age groups as compared with their Western counterparts (e.g., Campbell & Xue, 2001;Chen & Stevenson, 1995;Miller, Smith, Zhu, & Zhang, 1995;Stevenson, Chen, & Lee, 1993;Stevenson et al, 1990). Would Chinese 3-and 4-year-olds then have developed linear representations of numbers after a year or so of learning numbers in preschool?…”