Stereotypes as Anglo-American exam ritual? Comparisons of students’ exam anxiety in East Asia, America, Australia, and the United Kingdom

Abstract

East Asian dominance in international large-scale assessments is widely known. This is often explained as an outcome of highly competitive, exam-oriented education systems in East Asia, wherein students partake in a fierce competition for limited college entrance. Although achievement scores may be comparatively higher, the argument goes, the relative success comes at a steep price, with the emphasis on high-stakes tests heightening student stress and anxiety. In this paper we refute this persistent and out-dated stereotype by focusing on changes in Japanese education over the past several decades. The two original studies we report herein show that not only do Japanese students feel less school-related anxiety and stress than they once did, but these levels are now comparable to students in America, Australia, and the United Kingdom. In showing that stereotypes do not match empirical realities, we seek to open a richer discussion around East Asian student achievement. We conclude by extending the discussion to recent changes in China, Taiwan, and South Korea. We then raise the possibility that fundamentally different outlooks on the learning process explain both differences in achievement and the persistence of the West’s distorted images of Japanese and East Asian education.

Keywords:

• High performing systems
• PISA
• Exam Hell
• school-related anxiety

Notes

1. Please note we make no clear distinction between pressure and stress given these are intertwined, although the former usually relates to external factors and the latter suggests subjective states.

2. Educational credentialism means that a society in which employment, social interactions, and individual status are determined primarily by which academic degrees one holds and what institutions these were obtained from (see Amano, 1989, pp. 115–119; Dore, 1976).

3. Tanaka (2018) argues that the institutional structure of the Korean upper secondary system following the 1974 Equalization Policy will maintain Exam Hell in Korea indefinitely, i.e. despite these larger social and political changes. We remain unconvinced, given the lack of data he presents. Neverthless, future research would do well to investigate this possibility and nuance our macro-picture with intra-regional differences.

4. Of course politically motivated, ‘shallow’ attempts that feign learning exist (Rappleye, 2012; Takayama, 2017; You & Morris, 2016), but these are not our focus here.