Hsin, A., & Xie, Y. (2014). Explaining Asian Americans' academic advantage over whites. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(23), 8416-8421. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1406402111

University of Connecticut

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Explain the superior academic achievement of Asian Americans over whites.  

Achievement Gap: Cultural Differences between Asian Americans and Whites

The findings show that greater academic effort such as attentiveness and work ethic contributes most in Asian-American's advantage in academic achievements. 

Explaining the Asian-American Advantage in Education

Though Asian-Americans have advantage in cognitive abilities as early age, it won't last till school age. Most researches tend to measure family SES, parent's expectations, and access in educational resources instead.

(2) Cognitive Abilities

More evidences show that Academic Achievements is associated with "noncognitive skills" , "self-control" and "motivation processes". Asian-American parents engage more in parenting practice to promote students' academic achievement- they have higher expectation and are more authoritarian, 

(3) Academic Efforts (Attentiveness and Work Ethic)

Asian-American tending to live in more stable, well educated two-parent families plays partial role of Achievement gap. Moreover, Asian-Americans are not equally gaining benefits form family SES. 

(1)  Socio-demographic Characteristics

The study combines data from two nationally representative cohort longitudinal surveys to compare Asian American and white students in their educational trajectories from kindergarten through high school. 
- Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K) 
- Education Longitudinal Study (ELS) 

Data and Methods

Fig. 1
- Asian Americans enter school with no significant advantage over whites 
- Advantage grows over time
-Asian Americans significantly outperform whites by fifth grade
- There's peak in 10th grade for  Asian–white gap peaks 

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