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An International Comparative Study on the Degree of Difficulty of Primary School Mathematics Textbooks Kuang Kongxiu, Yang Xinrong ,Cai Qingyou, Song Naiqing(corresponding author) School of Mathematics and Statistics, Southwest University, Chongqing, China Abstract The understanding of the degree of difficulty of primary or secondary school textbooks internationally is significant for a country to develop its own primary or secondary school textbooks. This study first constructed a mathematical model to examine the degree of difficulty of primary school mathematics textbooks based on literature review, interviews with mathematics educators, and followed up exploratory factor analysis. Then the degree of difficulty of 12 sets of the most popularly used and representative primary school mathematics textbooks in 10 countries, including China, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Russia, the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Australia was analyzed with the use of the mathematical model. Results suggest that the degree of difficulty of primary school mathematics textbooks used in these countries can be sorted from high to low as the following order: France(Belin Publishers), Russia (The 21st Century Press), Germany(Schroedel), Germany(Klett), China(Peoples Education Press), Japan (啓林館), South Korea (Doosan Press), Australia(Thomson Nelson), Singapore (Marshall Cavendish Education Publishers), Australia(Pearson Companies), The United States(Pearson Companies), British (Collins Press). Key Words: Primary school mathematics; textbooks; model on difficulty; international comparison 1