Unpacking the paradox of Chinese science learners: insights from research into Asian Chinese school students’ attitudes towards learning science, science learning strategies, and scientific epistemological views

Abstract

Chinese students’ excellent science performance in large-scale international comparisons contradicts the stereotype of the Chinese non-productive classroom learning environment and learners. Most of the existing explanations of this paradox are provided from the perspective of teaching and learning in a general sense, but little work can be found which systematically summarises the findings from the research on Chinese science learners and their science learning so as to explain the paradox. In this paper, a total of 25 empirical quantitative studies, whose sample sizes range from 132 to 8815, published between 1987 and 2014, are reviewed. Three aspects are explored: students’ science learning strategies, attitudes towards learning science and their scientific epistemological views. In addition to summarising the results reported in these studies, efforts are made to link them with the paradox of the Chinese learners, and to generate some hypotheses to resolve it. Finally, directions for further research are suggested.

Keywords:

• Chinese learners
• science learning strategy
• attitude towards learning science
• scientific epistemological views

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. As reflected in the following section, only the findings on the relationships between them are found in this paper.

2. We did not identify any relevant studies conducted in Macau.

3. Singaporean students are of diverse ethnic backgrounds, including Chinese, Indian, Malay and Eurasian. Therefore, the Singaporean samples included in three studies reviewed in this paper (Caleon & Subramaniam, 2008; Lin, Goh, Chai, & Tsai, 2013; Lin, Tan, & Tsai, 2013) are not all Chinese students. However, these papers did not separate Singaporean Chinese students from other Singaporean students when reporting the findings. Considering the fact that more than 70% of the population in Singapore is of Chinese ethnicity, the present review still considers that the results reported in these studies can provide a very rough estimation of Singaporean Chinese students.