Students from a Chinese background demonstrate outstanding performance in international mathematics assessments. Besides cultural characteristics, innate mathematics ability is often referred to as the reason for their performance. This paper aims to debunk this assumption of innate ability and provide an alternate perspective to the discussion by…

This study investigates the structure and cross-cultural (in)variance of mathematical self-beliefs in relation to mathematics achievement in two world regions: Confucian Asia (Singapore, South Korea, Hong Kong and Taiwan) and Europe (Denmark, The Netherlands, Finland, Serbia and Latvia). This is done both pan-culturally and at a multigroup-level,…