Revisiting the explanations for Asian American scholastic success: a meta-analytic and critical review

Abstract

A few popular explanations attempt to argue for a weaker relationship between socioeconomic status (SES), parental involvement (PI), and achievement among Asian Americans compared to their white counterparts: Asian American students' Confucian culture, strong motivation for upward mobility as immigrants, unique forms of parental involvement different from European Americans, and ethnic social capital. However, there has not been a single synthesis up to date empirically testing whether the effect size for SES and/or PI and achievement is actually weaker among Asian Americans across the body of accumulated scholarship. In this review, we found that quantitatively, the SES-achievement relationship was null for Asian Americans while it was positive for PI and achievement. The current scholarship revealed several key problems. In spite of the intuitive and appealing cultural arguments put forward emphasizing Confucianism and immigration optimism, our review points out that these arguments have weak empirical support, and are too generic to be convincingly applied to Asian Americans without any distinction by ethnicity or generation. Furthermore, the parental involvement measures used did not effectively capture Asian American parents' behaviors. Our review suggests a new comprehensive model better integrating the Confucian and immigrant optimism explanation, developing culturally appropriate measures of PI, distinguishing ethnic variation within Asian American groups, and including a nuanced view on how and whether the explanations hold across generations.

A Systematic Overview of Meta-Analyses on Socioeconomic Status, Cognitive Ability, and Achievement: The Need to Focus on Specific Pathways

“…Although some meta-analyses also examined partial correlations or used multiple regression (i.e., controlling for IQ or high school GPA), there were no tests of the pathways that may explain why SES is related to performance on measures of cognitive ability and achievement. One meta-analysis provided a qualitative review of cultural factors proposed to link SES to academic achievement among Asian Americans (immigrant optimism and Confucian culture), but found weak support (Kim et al., 2018). Another meta-analysis concluded that the effect between SES and college grades is mediated by admissions test scores because the average effect between SES and college grades decreased substantially when controlling for test scores (Sackett et al., 2009).…”

“…The relation between SES and academic achievement was often larger for samples with more White participants compared to non-White participants (e.g., Harwell et al., 2017). One meta-analysis focused only on Asian Americans even found a null effect size (Kim et al., 2018). In contrast, Lawson et al.…”

“…The meta-analyses we reviewed elucidate opportunities to apply these methods. For example, in addition to conducting a meta-analysis, Kim et al. (2018) provided a narrative review of cultural factors proposed to link SES to academic achievement among Asian Americans (immigrant optimism and Confucian culture).…”

Meta-Analysis of Parental Involvement and Achievement in East Asian Countries

“…Asian American groups do not distinguish between various subgroups: The “Asian American” classification includes not only Korean Americans and Chinese Americans but also Pacific Islander, Native Hawaiian, Samoan American, Chamorro, Cambodian American, Hmong American, Vietnamese American, Indian American, and Filipino American groups. However, they are described as a homogeneous group sharing a Confucian tradition leading to their high achievement, which has been a point of criticism (Kim, Cho, & Song, 2018; Lee & Zhou, 2014). Despite these issues, one commonality we can tease out between our East Asian sample and the Asian Americans represented here are their locale of origin and “high-achieving” characteristic: The East Asian countries represented in our sample have acquired the reputation for scoring well on PISA tests, whereas Asian Americans are seen to be successful in school, with various explanations and descriptions of their academic success.…”

Facing academic problems: Longitudinal relations between parental involvement and student academic achievement from a self‐determination perspective

“…Parental involvement in children's education is widely acknowledged as a crucial factor influencing youth development. In particular, parental involvement has been found to coincide with children's academic achievement (Castro et al, 2015;Fan & Chen, 2001;Jeynes, 2003Jeynes, , 2012Jeynes, , 2015Jeynes, , 2016Jeynes, , 2017Kim, 2020;Kim et al, 2019;Ma et al, 2016). After the transition from primary to secondary school, the importance of academic achievement continuously increases (e.g., Barber & Olsen, 2004).…”