Self-beliefs, metacognition and mathematics achievement: A comparison of US and East-Asian students

Economic and cultural differences among US vs. East-Asian students’ self-beliefs and metacognition affect their mathematics achievements. Students who have positive feelings about mathematics, value it, expect success, or precisely calibrate their self-concept often show greater effort and mathematics achievement than others. Along with metacognitive calibration, metacognitive strategies increase both a student’s and classmates’ mathematics performance (especially classmates in East Asia). Countries’ economies enable public investments (e.g., schools) and family capital that magnify self-belief effects and affect mathematics achievement. Unlike US’s dignity culture, East Asian countries’ face culture facilitates extrinsic motivation and modesty bias, yielding greater effort, help-seeking, classmate metacognition effects and mathematics achievement. Implications include: (a) poorer countries investing in public educational resources, (b) richer countries integrating richer and poorer students, (c) raising East Asian student extrinsic motivation via their families, (d) accurate calibration of US students’ self-concepts (checking answers, applying mathematics, and social comparison), and (e) improving metacognitive skills. Copyright © 2017 Nova Science Publishers, Inc.