Relationships between learning strategies and self-efficacy: A cross-cultural comparison between Taiwan and the United States using latent class analysis

ABSTRACT

Learning behavior of East Asian students has been debated due to their striking performance on international large-scale assessments. This study was a comparative study using latent class analysis to examine students’ perceptions of learning strategies, students’ reported learning strategy use, and the relationships between learning strategies and self-efficacy across Taiwanese and American students in the Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2012. The results indicate that learning strategy items were perceived equivalently. Taiwanese students (5%) reported less memorization than American students (19%). More Taiwanese students (63%) reported elaboration strategy; more American students (57%) reported control strategy. High self-efficacy Taiwanese students reported memorization the least; high self-efficacy American students reported elaboration less than control strategy. Implications are discussed.

KEYWORDS:

• Learning strategies
• self-efficacy
• latent class analysis
• PISA 2012

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ PISA 2012 adopted a rotated design for the student questionnaire. In other words, not every student answered self-efficacy and learning strategies items. In this study, Form A was used to conduct analyses, because only Form A included self-efficacy and learning strategy use items.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences which is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) under the German Excellence Initiative [GSC1024].

Notes on contributors

Yi-Jhen Wu

Yi-Jhen Wu is a doctoral student at Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences at Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg. Her research interests include learning strategies, self-efficacy, motivation, and the application of item response theory.

Sarah M. Kiefer

Sarah M. Kiefer, Ph.D., University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, is an associate professor of Educational Psychology in the College of Education at the University of South Florida. Dr. Kiefer’s research interests include the study of adolescent motivation, peer relationships, and developmentally responsive teaching practices.

Yi-Hsin Chen

Yi-Hsin Chen, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of educational measurement and research in the Department of Educational and Psychological Studies at the University of South Florida. His research interests are focused on applications of item response theory, cognitive psychometric modeling, and structural equation modeling  to educational and psychological data.