Young Asian-Americans tend to believe the positive cultural stereotypes that Asians are destined to attain academic success. Teachers tend to evaluate Asian-Americans in positive ways to boost their performances.

Benefits from Cultural Stereotypes

Asian Americans' cultural beliefs emphasize the strong positive relationship between hard working and academic achievement. They tend to believe that cognitive abilities could be developed by efforts, while Whites believe cognitive abilities are inherent. 

Explanation for Asian-White gap:Cultural Orientation explanation

(1) Cultural Orientation 
(2) Immigrant selectivity
(3) Adaptive Strategies
- emphasize the young Asian-Americans outlook  towards the importance of effort in attaining better academic achievement.


Explanation for Asian-White gap:Immigration Status in Achievement Gap

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

University of Connecticut

Explain the superior academic achievement of Asian Americans over whites.  

Achievement Gap: Cultural Differences between Asian Americans and Whites

Explaining the Asian-American Advantage in Education

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. Retrieved January 10, 2021, from http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.lib.uconn.edu/stable/23776433

Explaining Asian Americans' academic advantage over whites. 

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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