A Multilevel Analysis of Japanese Middle School Student and School Socioeconomic Status Influence on Mathematics Achievement

Abstract

This study consisted of two parts; a) Japanese eighth graders and Japanese middle school socioeconomic status (SES) simultaneous influence on student math achievement and b) parental educational influence on Japanese eighth graders’ likelihood of participation in extra math lessons by utilizing the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) Japan data sets. Four-thousand-eight-hundred-fifty-six randomly selected Japanese eighth graders (male = 2,455, female = 2,401) from 146 public (national and other public) and private middle schools participated in their study. The theoretical framework was Bronfenbrenner’s bioecological theory. There were four challenges in this study to improve the extant literature: a) statistical issues, b) the combined influence of SES and non-SES, c) incongruent results on school SES impact, and d) insufficient number of quantity and quality studies. Two-level multilevel analysis and multilevel ordinal models were applied respectively to analyze the data sets. The results indicated that at the student level, different aspects of student SES (i.e. number of books, the possession of computers, paternal, and maternal educational achievements were positively related to Japanese student math achievement. At the school level, two aspects of school SES (i.e. less populated schools and economically disadvantaged schools) were negatively related to Japanese student math achievement. Especially, Japanese students who attended schools in less populated areas were more disadvantaged relative to those who attended schools in more populated areas. None of the cross-level interactions were significant, but the random effect for computer slope was significant. The results of the proportional reduction of prediction error explained by both student and school SES were small, meaning the residual variances at student and school SES were small. Small school SES residual variance may indicate a stratification of public middle schools. The findings also showed that maternal educational background was related to their children’s odds of participation in extra math lessons after schools. When mothers were more educated, Japanese students were more likely to participate in extra math lessons. From the results of the two study findings, the maternal level of education influenced Japanese students’ academic areas. The theoretical applications in the contexts of Japanese culture were also discussed.