Eric.ed.gov – Ethnic Differences in Early Math Learning: A Comparison of Chinese-American and Caucasian-American Families.

This study compared Chinese-American and Caucasian-American children and families in order to better understand which cultural and family characteristics, parent beliefs, and parent practices operate at the early childhood level to produce the more uniform high level of math achievement among Asian-American children. Forty second-generation Chinese-American and 40 Caucasian-American preschoolers and kindergartners from well-educated, 2-parent families were given math, name writing, visual discrimination, spatial relation, and vocabulary measures. Parents completed questionnaires, interviews, and a social behaviors checklist. The study found that Chinese-American children outperformed Caucasian-American children on measures of mathematics, spatial relations, visual discrimination, numeral formation, and name writing. Caucasian-American children had higher scores on receptive English vocabulary. Chinese-American parents indicated a stronger belief in the role of hard work and early skill development in academic achievement, gave more direct math instruction, structured their children’s time to a greater degree, and reported more encouragement for math-related activities than did Caucasian-American parents. Ethnicity, parents’ child-specific attitudes, and directive teaching techniques were the strongest predictors of child math performance, numeral formation, and motor coordination. Six tables showing study data are included. A description of Chinese-American and Caucasian-American parent characteristics is appended. Contains 29 references. (MDM)