The Influence of Culture on Students’ Mathematics Achievement in East Asia

Abstract

A prominent phenomenon of education development in the Asia-Pacific region has been the superior mathematics achievement of East Asian students in international assessments such as Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and Program for International Student Assessment (PISA). One broadly proposed explanation for this phenomenon was the common culture shared by East Asian countries: Confucian Heritage Culture (CHC). Instead of analyzing features of CHC and relating them to mathematics achievement in general ways, this chapter explores more specifically how culture may have affected East Asian students’ mathematics achievement in a more direct way by discussing research findings from two areas of enquiry – The first is from research involving secondary data analyses of international studies such as TIMSS and PISA. These studies provide evidence for common patterns of strengths and weaknesses in mathematics performance and other educational practices shared by East Asian students. The second is from research that investigated the differences in linguistic structure in English and in East Asian languages such as Chinese, and clinical studies on the impact of the differences on the performance of speakers of the different languages when they process the mathematics items.The chapter concludes that there are many commonalities in educational practices and patterns of students’ mathematics performance among the East Asian countries, indicating that the countries may form a cultural cluster. Notably, East Asian languages appear to influence mathematics learning and assessment in ways different from Western languages, and some features of the Chinese language may prove to be beneficial for students’ mathematics learning. Finally, implications of the discussions above are highlighted.KeywordsEast Asian culturePatterns in mathematical performanceInfluence of language on the learning of mathematics