Brief Report: Grade Placement of Addition and Subtraction Topics in Japan, Mainland China, the Soviet Union, Taiwan, and the United States

Abstract

There has been considerable recent concern about the mathematics achievement of children in the United States compared to that of children in the Soviet Union and in countries of the Far East (Benderson, 1984; Fiske, 1987; Husen, 1967; Stevenson, Lee, & Stigler, 1986; Stigler, Lee, Lucker, & Stevenson, 1982; Wirszup, 1986). One possible source of the superior achievement in these other countries is the placement of topics within the mathematics curriculum. If topics are presented earlier in these countries, children would be given an opportunity to cover more topics and thus might be able to learn more mathematics by comparable grade levels. The present study examined the grade placement of topics in basic addition and subtraction computation with whole numbers across five countries: Japan, mainland China, the Soviet Union, Taiwan, and the United States.