Mathematics Achievement of Chinese, Japanese, and American Children

Abstract

American kindergarten children lag behind Japanese children in their understanding of mathematics; by fifth grade they are surpassed by both Japanese and Chinese children. Efforts to isolate bases for these differences involved testing children on other achievement and cognitive tasks, interviewing mothers and teachers, and observing children in their classrooms. Cognitive abilities of children in the three countries are similar, but large differences exist in the children's life in school, the attitudes and beliefs of their mothers, and the involvement of both parents and children in schoolwork.

Environmental Input and Cognitive Growth: A Study Using Time‐Period Comparisons

“…Second, children from schools providing more input attain higher skill levels than children from schools providing less input. For example, Chinese children, who receive more mathematics instruction at school than American children, attain higher levels of mathematical skill than American children (e.g., Stevenson, Lee, & Stigler, 1986;Stigler, Lee, & Stevenson, 1987). Animal studies also show that variation in environmental input is related to brain development as indexed by the thickness of the cerebral cortex, dendritic elaboration, and so forth (e.g., Diamond, Krech, & Rosenzweig, 1964;Greenough & Volkmar, 1973).…”

Exceptionally high intelligence and schooling.

“…The most gifted students in the United States perform far worse than high-ability students in other countries, and about half of the top U.S. students (in the top 5% of the IQ range) are underachieving (Reis, 1994;VanTassel-Baska, 1991). Although international comparisons suggest that most U.S. children are underachieving because at all ability levels they perform poorly as compared with the children in many European and East Asian nations (Stevenson, Chen, & Lee, 1993;Stevenson, Lee, & Stigler, 1986;Stevenson & Stigler, 1992), the gap between potential and performance is probably the greatest for the most gifted children (Ross, 1993). Thus, the most intellectually gifted students are the most underchallenged group, and cross-cultural comparisons suggest that these students could be performing at a far higher level.…”

Education and cognitive development: A natural experiment.

“…Second, research on the development of specialized knowledge or expertise (e.g., on 10-yearold chess masters or 5-year-old dinosaur experts; Chi, 1978;Chi & Koeske, 1983;Chi, Hutchinson, & Robin, 1989) has revealed the degree to which intensive learning experiences can improve memory and other thinking skills, at least in the domain of expertise (Ceci & Liker, 1986). Finally, the superior mathematics performance exhibited by Japanese elementary school children over American children (Stevenson, Lee, & Stigler, 1986) appears to stem in large part from differing parental expectations and specific instructional practices in and outside school (Stevenson, Lee, Chen, Stigler, Hsu, & Kitamura, 1990). Taken together, these findings have reawakened interest in the role played by specific learning experiences in shaping when and how cognitive skills develop (Fischer, 1980).…”