Effort counts: The moral significance of effort in the patterns of credit assignment on math learning in the Confucian cultural context

Students in East Asia, including Taiwan, stand out on international math assessments and tend to attribute their achievement to effort. This study only focuses on the cultural factor with regard to the effort/credit relationship in math learning that may contribute to students' math performance. It aims to examine why effort is valued and how parents and teachers assign credit for students' effort, and thereby to establish a link among effort, moral image, and credit assignment. Questionnaires containing various scenarios were administered to three groups in Taiwan: 120 parents, 89 teachers, and 121 students. The results showed that as the mediating variable, moral image acts to explain how the relationship unfolds: Higher levels of effort lead to better moral image, thus resulting in more credit being assigned.