Methodological Advances in Cross-National Surveys of Educational Achievement (2002) / Chapter Skim
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5. Cultural-Cognitive Issues in Academic Achievement: New Directions for Cross-National Research
5. Cultural-Cognitive Issues in Academic Achievement: New Directions for Cross-National Research
Pages 115-149
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Part II Culture and Context
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are the most recent (Beaton et al., 1996; Husen, 1967; McKnight et al., 1987~. In addition to these IEA investigations, a large body of research has compared the achievement outcomes of American students with their peers in other nations.
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In addition to observing and documenting the range of cognitive goals that cultures have for members of their group, it is critical to understand the social and cultural beliefs about learning that give rise to these values. Beliefs and attitudes about learning and achievement form the core of achievement motivation research today.
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119 The accumulated work on cross-national achievement generally has been praised for bringing attention to the state of underachievement in the United States, especially as it relates to technical knowledge (Bempechat & Drago-Severson, 1999~. The existing research has led educators to take a closer look at factors that may be contributing to the underachievement of American students, such as pedagogical practices (Stigler & Hiebert, 1999)
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Shore has argued for the integration of cultural psychology and cognition through his notion of an "ethnographic conception of mind," in which cultural knowledge would be viewed as rich and diverse and shared through various cultural models. While cultural psychologists do indeed endorse this view, much of the work we discuss in this chapter tends to characterize nations as being at one or the other end of a dichotomy.
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Any study that measures achievement without concurrently examining the context in which this achievement occurs will yield results that may be limited in their use. The integration of achievement motivation theory with social cognition has resulted in a much deeper understanding of the motivational factors that underlie academic achievement.
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They are very much influenced by the achievement beliefs of their parents, peers, and teachers, as well as the social and cultural environment in which they are growing (Ames & Archer, 1987; Ogbu, 1986; Peak, 1991~. In the context of cross-national comparisons of academic achievement, the issue becomes one of integrating the sociocultural contexts of education with social-cognitive aspects of learning.
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Achievement Beliefs and Culture To consider culture in education means that we have to study education in the cultural context in which it takes place (Bruner, 1996~.
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In other words, folk pedagogies drive educational policy and practice, and we need to understand these if we are to be able to draw reasonable and pragmatic conclusions from cross-national comparisons of academic achievement. Indeed, a culture's socialization goals shape its pedagogy.
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An enduring concern for cross-cultural researchers is the differential meaning that students, parents, and teachers bring to the same or similar educational concepts. For example, much has been made of lapanese students' adherence to effort as a means to ensure school success, and American students' beliefs in innate ability as the driving force behind achievement (Stevenson et al., 1993~.
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In the following section, we discuss models of development in social and cultural contexts. Sociocultural Models of Development Kitayama (Kitayama, Markus, Matsumoto, & Noraskkunkit, 1997)
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They then argue that these different tendencies enable individuals to function in and adapt to their cultural contexts. This line of inquiry research has examined the tendency toward selfenhancement in the United States and self-criticism in Japan.
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In a different cultural context, where selfconcepts are perceived as malleable, a method such as the TST is inappropriate because participation in a different culture requires qualitatively different ways of being. Furthermore, the individualist/collectivist dichotomy does not represent the range of cultural selfways.
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Such an assumption has proved somewhat problematic for a series of cross-national studies on achievement and motivation, which we discuss below. Applying European-American Concepts to Other Cultures: An Illustration Much of the literature on student achievement across nations has been devoid of the cultural contexts in which learning takes place.
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The second problem is that, in most studies of achievement motivation, these words and phrases have not been articulated by students themselves, but rather have been imposed from the outside by educational researchers. This approach, which is etic in nature, has failed to consider the ways in which students might speak differentially about and understand the meanings of learning, achievement, and motivation in the context of their own educational experiences, an issue we will raise.
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Despite the considerable importance of cultural variation in the meanings of words, the Stevenson team presented a compelling, yet incomplete explanation for the high achievement of Asian as compared to American students (Bempechat & Drago-Severson, 1999~. Using rank orderings of attributions and Likert-style rankings, Stevenson found that in some, but not all cases, Japanese and Chinese students demonstrate stronger beliefs in the value of effort over innate ability in school performance (Stevenson et al., 1986~.
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A more complete theory of cognitive development should include the broad range of cognitive goals valued across cultures. Meaning Making in Culture and Context: The Importance of Emic Research In our more recent work, we have argued that research practices in the field of achievement motivation need to become more integrated with those in psychological anthropology (Bempechat & Drago-Severson, 1999; Quihuis, Bempechat, limenez, & Boulay, in press)
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On the contrary, the judicious integration of both methodologies is essential to our continuing efforts to deepen our knowledge and understanding of the social, psychological, and cultural factors that influence approaches to teaching and learning. In this regard, indepth qualitative studies and ethnographies can provide the rich and contextualized information that we need in order to understand the meanings of particular educational beliefs and attitudes in cultural context, defined by criteria from within the culture in question (Schurmans & Dasen, 1992~.
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In Japan, for example, mothers and their children tend to place more emphasis than do their American counterparts on effort as a cause of low achievement in mathematics, but their relative weighting of effort appears unrelated to the students grades in school (Holloway, Kashiwagi, Hess, & Azuma, 1986~. Elliott and Hufton found that understanding the complexities behind these and several other such puzzles could best be achieved by means of a combination of classroom observations, in-depth interviews and an analysis of the broader sociocultural context (Elliott et al., 2001; Elliott et al., 1999; Hufton, Elliott, & Illushin, in press; Hufton & Elliott, 2000~.
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For Japanese and Latino teachers and parents, respectively, the purpose of formal schooling, then, is not simply to highlight unequal abilities and mastery of content material, but to socialize children toward morality and appropriate social behavior that would have a positive influence on the development of their character. Unlike Americans, the Japanese reluctance to elevate innate ability to high status is tied to the culture's beliefs about equality (Tobin et al., 1989~.
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Building Grounded Theory Building a grounded theory implies that students', parents', and teachers' own meanings their emic concepts emerge in interviews and provide insights that have not been described in research that is based on theory and previous findings. The challenge for researchers is to approach interviewees with no preconceived notions of what might constitute their understanding of their educational experiences.
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This is because cognitive psychologists, heavily influenced by theorists Piaget and Vygotsky, have placed cultures and contexts at the center of their investigations on cognition. The eminent researchers of our day, including Rogoff, Lave, Haste, Cole, and Scribner, are perhaps best described as comparative cognitive researchers, working in the domains of cultural psychology or cognitive anthropology.
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How can this work be applied to cross-national studies in mathematics learning? One goal of large cross-national studies should be to broaden our understanding of cognitive development in cultural context, and to document the varied cognitive outcomes and teaching methods valued in different cultures.
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It would be inappropriate, however, to conduct this kind of ethnographic study in different nations, given that sorting and categorizing skills may not be scaffolded universally via a grocery shopping trip. While it is the case that cultural models of learning and achievement are affected by the global adoption of certain structures, such as mass education (Meyer, Ramirez, & Soysal, 1992)
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Third, fine-grained qualitative field work can be used to uncover the beliefs, norms, and commitments and understand the rationale of practices amongst the participants. Fourth, researchers can consider relations between potentially influential wider systems of beliefs and commitment and normative practices and any system found in the beliefs, commitments and rationales of practice amongst those they are researching.
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Interestingly enough, cross-national data, in one form or another, moved from detailed ethnographic accounts across countries and the use of qualitative inquiry to a somewhat sole reliance on quantitative methods, given the introduction of internationally valid standards of such inquiry by the IEA. Although quantitative methods allowed cross-national data to be compared on equivalent measures, such large-scale inquiry must be coupled with qualitative methods, as Husen (1967)
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, firmly believe that the time is long overdue for an integration of more sophisticated statistical methods, such as multilevel analyses along with qualitative methods for in-depth inquiry and analyses of how individuals make meaning of their experiences within educational systems. In all likelihood, there is probably more variation within nations than between nations.
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In general, prototype research methods require that the researcher interview individuals to elicit words and phrases that are used to describe the domain in question. This elegant method uses emic concepts, yet employs sophisticated quantitative analyses to understand the data.
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In contrast, Chinese students used words and phrases that related achievement as representing breadth and depth of knowledge, extraordinary ability, and the unity of moral development and knowledge. In short, American students appear to be hypercognized for the process of learning while the Chinese students appear to be hypercognized about attitudes for learning.
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(1996~. Mathematics achievement in the middle school years: IEA's Third International Mathematics and Science Study.
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British Educational Research Journal, 27~5~. Husen, T
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The Quarterly Newsletter of the Institute for Comparative Human Development, 1, 1-5.
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, Cultural psychology: Essays on comparative human development (pp.
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Herdt (Eds.) , Cultural psychology: Essays on comparative human development (pp.
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