A cross-cultural investigation into the development of place-value concepts of children in Taiwan and the United States

Abstract

This study builds on previous investigations that have compared the mathematics achievement of Asian and American students by analyzing the arithmetical learning contexts of children in Taiwan and in the United States. To this end, interviews were conducted with parents and teachers to identify cultural beliefs about learning arithmetic, ten lessons were video-recorded in one classroom in each country to identify classroom social interaction patterns, and interviews were conducted with children to identify the level of sophistication of their arithmetical concepts. Consistent with previous research, the arithmetical understandings of the Chinese children were found to be generally more advanced than those of their American counterparts. The analysis of the other data sources indicates that these differences in understanding reflect two significant differences in the sociocultural context within which Chinese and American children learn arithmetic. First, the arithmetical learning activities in which the Chinese children engaged at home and in school appeared to give them greater opportunities to construct consistenst arithmetical concepts. These differences in the arithmetical learning activities used in the two countries in turn appear to reflect different cultural beliefs about what constitutes normal or natural development when children learn arithmetic. Second, the obligations the Chinese children attempted to fulfill in order to be effective in the classroom were such that they had greater opportunities to explain and to reflect on their arithmetical interpretations and solutions. This in turn gave them greater opportunities to reorganize their thinking and construct increasingly sophisticated arithmetical concepts.