Understanding Early Mathematical Competencies in American and Chinese Children

Abstract

Most cross-cultural research on Chinese and American children’s early mathematical competencies has focused on their understanding of number and number operations. The present study broadened the range of tasks assessed to include geometric shapes, problem solving and logical reasoning, as well as number and numerical operations, in an effort to determine if: (a) there are within- and cross-culture differences in the development of mathematical knowledge in all domains and (b) the rate/order of development of the four different mathematics skills are comparable across cultures? One- hundred-and-sixty Chinese and US first grade students participated in this study one month after they entered first grade. The results indicated that Chinese and US children’s mathematical knowledge in the domain of numbers and operations is better developed than their mathematical knowledge in the other three domains, Chinese children outperformed American children on almost all tasks in all of the domains and the level of difficulty of mathematics concepts, across culture, seems to be universal (e.g. children’s conceptual knowledge within each of these domains seems to develop in the same order across cultures). The theoretical and educational implications of these results are discussed.