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Conceptions of effort among students,teachers and parents within an Englishsecondary schoolAndrew Stablesa, Kyoko Murakamib, Shona McIntoshb & SusanMartinb
a University of Roehampton, Roehampton, UKb Education, University of Bath, Bath, UKPublished online: 13 Jan 2014.
To cite this article: Andrew Stables, Kyoko Murakami, Shona McIntosh & Susan Martin (2014)Conceptions of effort among students, teachers and parents within an English secondary school,Research Papers in Education, 29:5, 626-648, DOI: 10.1080/02671522.2013.878376
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02671522.2013.878376
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Conceptions of effort among students, teachers and parents withinan English secondary school
Andrew Stablesa*, Kyoko Murakamib, Shona McIntoshb and Susan Martinb
aUniversity of Roehampton, Roehampton, UK; bEducation, University of Bath, Bath, UK
(Received 21 March 2013; final version received 19 December 2013)
‘Effort’ and ‘ability’ (understood as potential, intelligence or achievement) areconcepts widely used in the everyday language of schooling in Britain but eachterm lacks clear definition of its use in the school context. Meanwhile, theassessment of effort, alongside that of achievement, remains widespread. Thisarticle reports on an exploratory case study of conceptions of effort among threemajor actors in an English secondary school. Qualitative and quantitative datafrom questionnaires and interviews with teachers, students and parents at anEnglish comprehensive school were collected. Analysis reveals that understand-ings of ‘effort’ are not uniform. Rather, ‘effort’ is a shorthand term, which canbe used variably, therefore can be construed as a tool of negotiation, or a formof investment in a set of aims distinctive to each group or individual case. Thereis a strong case for more sustained research into the operationalizing of such keyconcepts in schools and other professional and workplace settings.
Keywords: effort; ability
Introduction
Try not to think of understanding as a ‘mental process’ at all. – For that is the expres-sion which confuses you. But ask yourself, in what sort of case, in what kind of cir-cumstances, do we say, ‘Now I know how to go on’… (Wittgenstein 1967, S154)
As part of our ‘going on’ in school, what does it mean to ‘make an effort’? Theassumption is that such concepts have universal, shared meanings. Wittgensteinreminds us that conceptual understanding is always contextual, and that meaningsare always meanings within the contexts of broader language games, or forms oflife. Very little work has been done to date on the construal of key everydayconcepts in professional practice (as opposed to academic discourse), such as theconcepts ‘ability’ and ‘effort’ that are part of the everyday language of schooling.Previous research, also funded by the British Academy, showed how trainee teachersfrom different subject backgrounds construed the concepts ‘literacy’ and ‘numeracy’somewhat differently (Stables, Martin, and Arnhold 2004), but in general this hasnot been a recognised focus of educational research.
The issue of how actors within an institution construe key operating concepts isan important one that deserves much greater research attention. To that end, the
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
© 2014 Taylor & Francis
Research Papers in Education, 2014Vol. 29, No. 5, 626–648, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02671522.2013.878376
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present research is regarded as an exploratory study. Using one school as a typicalcase (in many key respects), we sought to gain an understanding of how the majoractors within the organisation operationalised ‘effort’. The intention was not to clar-ify the meaning of ‘effort’ as an essentialised concept in order to facilitate its use in,for example, assessment. Rather, we were interested in the degree to which concep-tions cohered, the ways in which they differed and whether those differences wereconsistent between groups of actors (teachers, students and parents). Overall, wewere interested in whether there is a consensus about ‘effort’ in a school, whetherthat consensus aligns with the meaning accorded to the concept in foundational dis-ciplines, specifically philosophy and psychology, and how different parties construeand operationalise ‘effort’ for their own purposes and in differing contexts. Finally,the research allowed us to explore suitable research methods for gathering such dataand draw conclusions, albeit provisionally, about the conceptions of effort held bythree different sets of actors.
Background
In the everyday language of schooling in Britain, two concepts are widely used thatare regarded with scepticism by academics: one is ‘ability’ (often as a proxy forintelligence, potential or actual achievement); the other ‘effort’. Regarding the for-mer, there is an extensive literature to support the problematisation. In the lattercase, the term simply seems largely to have dropped out of academic usage. Aca-demics, however, ignore at their peril the explanatory power of certain constructs inthe popular and professional imaginations. Without such problematisation, dogmaticassertions can go unchecked. Consider, for example, the following:
… Praising a person’s intelligence only decreases the amount of effort that that personwill exert in the future … Praising effort leads children to believe that they are in con-trol of their performance … So please, stop praising intelligence. (Livanis 2007)
Livanis assumes that the obvious antidote to assessing ‘intelligence’ is to assess‘effort’ instead, thus effectively essentialising both concepts. He assumes that ‘Prais-ing effort leads children to believe they are in control of their performance’. Whilethese assumptions are highly questionable, the assessment of effort, alongside thatof achievement, remains a very common feature of life in British secondary schools,although we have little idea what exactly different actors mean by the term,let alone whether it remains an intellectually robust and valid construct.
Much of the recent debate in the US, to which Livanis refers, centres around thework of Carol Dweck who has reported in, inter alia, Scientific American. Dweck’sconcern is to replace a ‘fixed mind-set’ with a ‘growth mind-set’ (Dweck 1999,2006, 2007; Mueller and Dweck 1998) and ‘one way [of doing this] is by tellingstories about achievements that result from hard work’, while simply telling childrenthat they are ‘smart’ may be counterproductive (retrieved from www.sciam.com 30January, 2008). Whilst Dweck’s own approach is more nuanced than that suggestedby Livanis, therefore, it is easy to see how it might be interpreted as a sign that‘effort’ can be seen as a necessary corrective, if not a cure-all. There is an elementof essentialisation of both effort and intelligence here, which the present authors findproblematic, notwithstanding the value of attempting to move assessment and evalu-ation of students from evidence of their merely being ‘smart’.
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In short, where effort has been a focus of research, it has largely been taken asan unproblematised factor rather than a contested concept. While there is thus littleresearch into student, teacher or parent conceptualisations, there is, however, evi-dence of cultural differences in the extent to which success is ascribed to effort. Thisfalls short of analysis of the concept in use, but has bearing on such an analysis. Forexample, there is a difference between dominant Western and Asian perspectives,with Asians typically citing effort rather than ability as the strongest determinant ofsuccess (Kinlaw, Kurtz-Costes, and Goldman-Fraser 2001). In the North Americancontext, effort is often not seen as the primary educational value (Clifford 1986).Covington and Omelich (1979) suggest that western students tend to scorn thosewhose academic failure follows significant effort, and that it is more socially accept-able not to try hard than to try hard and then do badly.
Also, several studies show that effort and ability can be cited variously asexplanatory factors of success and failure, and that social class, gender and ethnicitycan all play their parts in this. For example, Urdan (1997) found that 13/14 year-oldstudents’ friends’ orientations toward academic effort and achievement were impor-tant in orientating students towards task goals, whereas associating with negativelyoriented friends encouraged extrinsic and effort avoidance goals. The positive orien-tation of friends was more important for boys than for girls.
Dweck’s concern, as noted above, is to replace a ‘fixed mind-set’ with a ‘growthmind-set’ (Dweck 1999, 2006, 2007); however, Schmitz and Skinner (1993) haveshown that while ‘effort’ is generally good for task performance, ‘for highly anxiouschildren, more effort leads to worse performance’ (Schmitz and Skinner 1993,1024). Not only was anxiety (high arousal, in Kahneman’s terms: see below) foundto be negative, but also increased the ‘time needed to complete homework assign-ments’ (1017). Thus over-conscientious students take longer, to less effect. Otherresearch painting a mixed picture of the value of effort will be considered below.
There have been no published empirical studies focused specifically on theassessment of effort in schools. Nor has it has been a topic of interest within philos-ophy of education. Even psychology largely gave up on effort in the early twentiethcentury. It seems as though, just as constructs such as ‘will’ became unpopularwithin both philosophy and psychology during the twentieth century, as they restedon outdated assumptions about the integrity of the human psyche and were notamenable to rigorous analytic procedures, so ‘effort’ has simply gradually fallen intodisuse as a working construct among psychologists and philosophers as a generalterm of personal orientation and has only continued in use in more highly specifiedand restricted contexts, such as that of schooling.
Established psychological and philosophical perspectives
In The Psychology of Effort (1897), Dewey defines effort as ‘the critical point ofprogress in action, arising whenever old habits are in process of reconstruction, orof adaptation to new conditions’ (55). On one level, this is arguably not a definitionat all. It tells us when effort occurs, not what it is. On another level, this unsettlesassumptions that constructs such as effort are expressions of autonomous rationalagents. Dewey’s pragmatic formulation paved the way for a gradual critical decon-struction of effort discourse, and the severing of any necessary connection betweeneffort and moral impulse, or even personal intention. Indeed, in other work, Deweyis critical of the idea that work inspired by effort alone is to be commended:
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Practically, the appeal to sheer effort amounts to nothing. When a child feels that hiswork is a task, it is only under compulsion that he gives himself to it. At every let upof external pressure his attention, released from constraint, flies to what interests him.(Dewey 1975, 5)
On neither version of Dewey’s account should effort be confused with attention.However, in the most recent major work centrally devoted to defining effort as aconstruct (Kahneman 1973), ‘attention’ and ‘effort’ remain mutually interdependentconstructs. Indeed, in many contexts, ‘momentary capacity, attention, or effort …are interchangeable’, each ‘controlled by feedback from the execution of ongoingactivities’ (Kahneman 1973, 13).
Physiologically, Kahneman strongly associates effort with arousal. The bodyresponds in much the same way to challenging tasks and stress. Furthermore,although ‘[I]n general, we … decide what aims we wish to achieve’, ‘arousal andeffort are usually not determined prior to the action’; rather, ‘the activities in whichwe engage determine the effort that we exert’ (14). Specifically, we need hard tasksto work hard at them (ibid.). There is an obvious educational implication here. How-ever committed the student is, she will only be able to rouse herself fully in responseto challenging demands and opportunities; we do not find it easy to work harder atboring tasks. Kahneman does not explore this, but this resonates a view that learningoccurs as students struggle with tasks that they were previously unable to achieve. Itplaces the emphasis more on the teacher to ‘try hard’ to scaffold learning than onthe student to ‘try hard’ to do well in whatever task is presented.
Overall, it is clear from Kahneman’s extensive study that ‘effort’ is not a simple,unproblematic construct with obvious educational implications. However, thefollowing are considerations for educators:
(1) It is difficult to devote a great deal of effort to simple tasks; on the otherhand, high arousal level increases performance more on simple than complextasks (Kahneman 1973, 34);
(2) Introverts are generally more aroused than extroverts so respond differentlyto tasks and seek different challenges (35);
(3) High arousal ‘narrows the attentional beam’ so can reduce effectiveness,increasing distraction and disorganisation, and damages short-term memory(41–42).
Recent educational studies
Kahneman’s third point shown above is echoed in the very limited range of recentpublished studies relating to effort and education. For example, although Schmitzand Skinner (1993) show that whilst ‘effort’ is generally good for task performance,they conclude overall that ‘children must experience a connection between theirefforts and outcomes’ (1025) but they repeatedly refer to ‘the complexity of theeffort variables’ (1020). Interestingly, relatively less happy children tended to bemore realistic about their performances. They state, ‘although in general more exer-tion leads to better performance, this relation differs enormously across children. Forsome children the expected positive link … is even negative’ (1024). Furthermore –contrary to the interpretations of Dweck, above – consistently attributing poor per-formance to effort may be counterproductive as it ‘may eventually lead children to
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question their capacity to sustain effort’ (1024). Schmitz and Skinner’s line on thisis reinforced by a later study of Matteucci and Gosling (2004), who found that ‘[e]ffort causal attribution of failure gives rise to punitive strategies and ascription ofresponsibility to the students’ (147).
Trautwein (2007) reinforces the finding that time spent on homework is not agood indicator of success. Again, Trautwein finds a general connection betweeneffort and achievement but the former is not defined explicitly and is measured by aseries of self-report questionnaire items, such as ‘I do my best in mathematics home-work’ – although the construct defined by these items shows strong internal validityas measured by Cronbach’s Alpha (Trautwein 2007, 84–86). The connectionbetween perceived effort and achievement is reinforced by Randall and Engelhard(2010), who show that American teachers allow their judgments about students’effort to inform their assessments of academic achievement.
Other studies since the mid-1980s contribute a little to the debate. Clifford(1986), following McNabb (1983), found that ‘attitude and future performance werejudged more favourable when the academic failure of a college freshman was attrib-uted to strategy rather than effort’ (Clifford 1986, 178). Kruger et al. (2004) showhow judgments of quality are generally reinforced by estimations of the effortinvolved (so a painting or poem will be more positively evaluated if responders feela sustained effort has been made), though this is not consistent: sometimes we preferthe apparently spontaneous over the evidently worked-over manuscript, for example.Chouinard, Karsenti, and Roy (2007) associate effort in mathematics with ‘masterygoals’ and ‘competence beliefs’.
Towards a definition
Overall, the literature on effort is thin given the ubiquity of effort as an educationalconstruct. Drawing on both the above literature and personal and professional expe-rience, it is tempting to conjecture that ‘effort’ is defined in the ordinary language ofschooling with the following emphases: effort as achievement (if it is good, hardwork must have gone into it: Kruger et al. 2004; Randall and Engelhard 2010);effort as perseverance (time taken being an indicator of energy expended: Schmitzand Skinner 1993); effort as reliability or good behaviour (the student whose workis always on time, of requisite length and so on); and finally, effort as student inter-est (cf. Kahneman 1973). However, this taxonomy is neither exhaustive nor tested.Given that it is not possible to construct a sufficiently robust analytical frameworkto conduct a purely deductive study of conceptualisations in schools, this taxonomywas used as a preliminary analytical framework to explore how far such definitionsand associations of effort hold true among teachers, students and parents.
Methods
Based on the literature review above, effort is conceived in four categories: (as relat-ing to) achievement, perseverance, reliability and interest. An exploratory case studywas undertaken in a secondary school. The four initial categories were used todesign data-gathering instruments including interviews and three questionnaires (forstudents, teachers and parents) and thus generated data for the preliminary analysis.The preliminary analysis provided a basis for planning focus group interviews withstudents and teachers.
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The research was guided by the main research question:
How do key actors (students, teachers and parents) in an English secondary schoolconceptualise ‘effort’?
In relation to this main question, the subsidiary research questions were:
(1) Do such conceptualisations differ between groups within the school?(2) Is there an overriding consensus?(3) Can any such differences be clearly associated with identifiable factors, such
as student gender or overall academic success?
The school and the participants
The school is a mixed ability, 11–18 comprehensive school with approximately1000 pupils in the west of England, drawing its students from a balance of urbanand rural communities. In relation to the country as a whole, it enjoys above averageexamination results and is not ethnically diverse, but in many respects it is typical ofEnglish secondary schools, particularly those outside metropolitan and severelydeprived areas. The participants in the project comprise four cohorts: Year 8 students(ages 12–13), their parents, their teachers and a representative of senior manage-ment.
Ethics and access
The research followed the University of Bath’s ethical procedures as well as consult-ing with the school management team prior to the data collection. Access to schooland students was sought firstly from the Head of the school and secondly throughletters to parents. The research participants gave informed consent and were offeredthe option of withdrawal. All participants have been anonymised in reporting of theresearch.
Data collection methods
Students
All data collection covered one academic year, comprising autumn (September–December), spring (January–March) and summer (April–July) terms. Two datacollection methods were used with students: a questionnaire followed by focus groupinterviews (Cohen, Manion, and Morrison 2007). The student questionnaires werecompleted by Year 8 students during the autumn term. They were administered byclassroom teachers. The student questionnaire (see Appendix 1) yielded quantitativeand qualitative data. The quantitative section comprised 30 items and was organisedin a Likert scale, that is, students were asked to indicate their strength of agreementwith a series of statements on a five-point scale. The questions were grouped underthe categories drawn from the literature review above. The questionnaire alsoincluded some open questions, yielding qualitative data, which came from six focusgroup interviews involving 35 children (19 boys and 16 girls). Although the scale ofthe project did not allow trialling of all research instruments, the student questionnaire
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was piloted with a class of Year 8 students in another school early in the autumn term.As a result, several changes were made to the questionnaire, including some reduc-tion in its length. Following the student questionnaire, six focus group interviewswith students were conducted by two members of the research team early in thespring term, bearing in mind both general guidelines on effective focus groupmanagement (Krueger 2009; Vaughn, Schumm, and Sinagub 1996) and the particularsensitivities of undertaking such group interviews with children (Gibson 2012). Theinterviews were semi-structured, around four open questions, and lasted about20 min. Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed.
Teachers
Collecting data from teachers proved much more difficult than from students, andthan anticipated. Again, questionnaires and interviews were used. To start with,questionnaires modelled closely on the student questionnaire were distributed toteaching staff during the autumn term. The questionnaires included a quantitativesection mirroring that given to the students, and some open-ended questions yieldingqualitative data (Appendix 2). Teacher data were of central importance to the pro-ject. When parent data became available in the spring term, analysis revealed thatparents often deferred to teachers in their judgments about their children’s levels ofeffort. To explore this further, we decided to seek more responses from teachers viaa revised questionnaire. The questionnaire format was simplified, using the on-linefree survey service ‘Survey Monkey’ (Hardre, Crowson, and Xie 2012, comparedpaper vs. online surveys and found that although a greater quantity was completedonline, the quality was not significantly different). Despite this revision, only twoteachers completed our on-line questionnaire. We decided on a visit to the schoolduring the summer term to ask teachers face-to-face to complete the revised versionof the questionnaire manually. Eventually, 24 teachers responded to the question-naire. On that same school visit, teacher focus group interviews were carried out bytwo of the research team. Although at each stage the teachers comprised an opportu-nity sample, they represented an appropriate range in terms of subject (sciences andarts), experience and gender.
Ten teachers took part in the focus group interviews. Each interview lastedbetween 30 and 60 min. The interviews were audio-recorded and transcribed. Aswith the student interviews, the teacher interviews were content analysed, guided bythe categories from the literature review as an initial coding scheme along with theadditional categories identified in the analysis of student data.
Parents
Fifty-one parents completed a semi-structured questionnaire modelled closely on thestudent and teacher questionnaires (Appendix 3). Following the initial poor responseto the teacher questionnaires, parents were invited to complete the questionnaires ona face-to-face basis. Upon the school’s approval, the researchers approached parentsduring a school parents’ evening during the spring term. Although it is not possibleto guarantee that the parents involved represented were entirely representative, it isworth noting the comment in the most recent Ofsted report (anonymised for ethicalreasons) that ‘Most students are from a White British heritage and the proportionknown to be eligible for free school meals is lower than average’. Thus, groups
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known for low levels of parental engagement were not highly represented within theschool population.
Data analysis
The analysis is primarily qualitative, although the means for individual items of theLikert scale were calculated and are reported selectively for illustrative purposes inthe analysis below as appropriate. (A full data-set can be made available on applica-tion to the authors.) As the categories relating to the construct measured by thequestionnaire were putative rather than established, it has not been assumed thatoverall scores on sections of the questionnaire can validly be used for inferential sta-tistical investigation, nor that we can make generalised judgments comparing groups(statistical cells) from the quantitative data alone. The only inferential statistics areχ2 tests on individual items that confirmed no significant gender difference on anyitem at the .05 level or above; therefore, there will be limited reference to genderdifferences in the analysis to follow. However, it is worth noting that the data arefrom a relatively small sample of students.
Content analysis following Cohen, Manion, and Morrison (2007) was used toanalyse the qualitative data of the questionnaire1 and student focus group interviewsusing the initial categories above. This was followed up with thematic analysis(Boyatzis 1998; Braun and Clarke 2006).
Findings
Students
Note on validity
We were aware of the problematics of role and presentation in focus groups (Jowettand O’Toole 2006). Had we been seeking reliable data on, for example, levels ofeffort of boys against girls (assuming ‘effort’ to be an essentialised concept that canvalidly be measured), this would have required extreme care in handling the data.As it is, our interest is in how the students conceive and operationalise effort, so themotivation for dishonesty is much reduced. Also, there are many examples, includ-ing some below, of students in the focus groups showing no hesitation in makingpotentially controversial remarks. Overall, therefore, we are happy that the focusgroup data are not unduly skewed by issues of role and self-presentation.
Table 1 gives the primary qualitative analysis using the initial categories fromthe literature review alongside new categories that emerged from analysis of the stu-dent focus groups. (See below for full explanation of this emergence).
There was scope for the students to give examples beyond homework of whenthey made an effort at home (helping with housework, for example). Where a com-ment could be attributable to an activity prompted within school or home, effort wasidentified more abundantly in relation to non-school activities, and that this wasequally so for boys and girls (Table 2).
General attitudes to effort
Overall, responses show that students believed it is important to make an effort inschool and that students like to make an effort with schoolwork and with homework.
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The questionnaire results were followed up in order to seek students’ elaboration inthe focus group interviews. A dislike towards homework showed up strongly in fiveof the six focus groups, some seeming to resent putting an effort into homework.This was expressed explicitly by girls:
I just don’t like homework [pause] cos I think we do enough work at school.
I get pointless Maths homework, but I still do it but it doesn’t mean I want to do it,but I do it.
Also, some students implied that students mete out effort to some tasks but notothers. For instance, a boy said, ‘[i]t kind of depends on how interesting thehomework is, so if it’s something you think is kind of engaging then you’ll want todo it well so …’.
Both quantitative and qualitative responses indicate that students are aware ofthe importance of making an effort as a general concept, but that in specificinstances, such as homework, they feel they can choose where to bestow their effort.Considering effort in relation to achievement sheds some light on the reasoningbehind choosing to make an effort.
Effort as achievement
When probing conceptions of effort linked with achievement, students’ responseswere somewhat contradictory. On the questionnaire, students strongly agreed (4.23)with the statement, You get better marks in a subject if you put in more effort, whilst
Table 1. Student questionnaire qualitative responses.
Code
Q1
Q1 Total
Q2
Q2 Total TotalB G B G
A Trying hardest/best – – – – – – –B Achievement 7 13 20 2 6 8 28C Perseverance – – – 1 3 4 4D Reliability 1 1 2 11 14 25 27E Interest 12 26 38 1 3 4 42F Affective 43 50 93 43 26 69 162V Virtuous circle 14 18 32 8 16 24 56P Purpose/point 18 18 36 7 17 24 60X Doing extra 2 – 2 – 1 1 3Z Focus/concentration 1 2 3 1 – 1 4
Note: n = number of separately identifiable comments.
Table 2. School-based vs. non-school-based activities in which students make an effort.
Boys Girls Total
School 12 15 27Non-School 19 21 40Total 31 36 67
Note: n = number of separately identifiable comments.
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also showing mild agreement (3.12) with Making an effort doesn’t always get youbetter marks. This was an area explored further in the student focus groups andrevealed a tension between viewing effort as a worthwhile struggle and effort seenas pointless in some situations where benefit could not be gained.
Goal orientation also emerged as a theme in the focus group discussions withinthe context of homework. In several cases, students saw a direct link between effortand assessment. The students admitted to trying harder when they know homeworkis linked to assessment: ‘I put like more effort into it if it’s a test’. Some linkedeffort to improvement: a girl commented, ‘You won’t get better at it if you don’t putin effort’. Where grading of effort was discussed, some students felt outcome wasmore important than the effort needed to produce it; a boy said, ‘[a]s long as youdone [sic] the work then it shouldn’t matter if you make an effort’.
There were indications that some students felt teachers were not in a position toassess students’ levels of effort accurately:
I don’t think we should be marked on our effort cos they [i.e. teachers] don’t knowhow much effort we are putting in.
Rather, they make their own evaluation of making effort:
If you know you’re bad at it then you just think you’re going to be bad at it for the restof your life. So you don’t really make an effort into it.
I don’t really bother with it, ‘cos I don’t think I’m good at it anyway.
As indicated above, students’ responses reveal complex reasoning behind giving orwithholding effort. Students’ view of how effort is related to achievement is com-pounded by two different views: firstly, students’ views on innate intelligence orability in a subject and secondly, the belief that one must try one’s hardest in allthings to get the best outcome. Whichever view a student has, the result seems to besimilar in that they choose to give or withhold their efforts if they can see a return,which they value.
Effort as perseverance and reliability
The concepts of effort as perseverance and effort as reliability did not attract anyextreme responses in the quantitative data. Questionnaire answers tended towardsthe middle ground responses of agree and not sure. The focus groups only had twoexamples of students seeing effort as perseverance (e.g. ‘putting time in to whatyou’re going to do’). However, the interview data did reveal the effects of tasklength on students’ effort levels. For example, a girl said longer tasks led to hereffort tailing off as the task went on. When asked what things helped students tomake an effort, another girl said she would like longer to do some homework. Theeffect of task length on effort levels could be further investigated as further data inthis area may be of value to those who set tasks for students.
For effort as reliability, the clearest examples show that students felt obliged totry hard for their peers:
If you’re doing something for a group then you might try harder so you don’t let peo-ple down and annoy them, you’d try hard for the group.
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However, a boy commented, perhaps ironically, on being a reliable student: ‘Hand-ing it in on the right day then that’s counted as effort’.
Effort as interest and enjoyment
Students perceived effort as strongly linked to being interested or feeling enjoyment.They strongly agreed with the questionnaire statement, I make more of an effortwhen I am interested in a subject (4.02) and with It’s easier to make an effort insomething if you are interested in it (4.35). In the focus groups students also talkedabout when it was ‘easy’ to make an effort. Fairly strong agreement was shown withthe questionnaire items, If a lesson isn’t fun it’s harder to make an effort (4.03) andYou make more effort when the lessons are more fun (3.96). The qualitative inter-view data further support that the students saw a strong link between effort and theamount of fun or interest they had in what they were doing. Five of the six focusgroups addressed this conception of effort, although they spoke about fun or interestas a condition for them putting in effort. The transcripts had 10 instances of studentsreferring effort to fun or interest. For instance, two girls said:
If you’re making an effort you tend to be interested.
If what you’re doing is fun and you actually understand it, why you’re doing it, then Ithink you make more of an effort.
Two boys said:
If it’s something fun it’s a lot easier to make an effort with.
If you’re interested you might want to try harder.
For students, having fun and being interested in the task often seem to be precondi-tions for making effort.
However, this is not always easy for teachers. In relation to students giving orwithholding effort levels, a boy commented as follows on teachers’ forced attemptsto make subject matter interesting and relevant:
Researcher: Ok …, have you got anything to add to that? What stops you makingan effort?
Student: Just like pointless tasks, when they [teachers] try bring creative charac-ters into it.
Researcher: Give me an example?Student: Like for example, a big ICT project, stuff like Nicky’s breakfast, I hate
it when they bring characters into it ‘cos it just doesn’t work.Researcher: So why does that not work for you?Student: Just because it’s trying to imitate what we do every day and I feel it’s
quite patronising.
In this case, the teacher’s idea of fun, that is her conception of what will inducethe students to make an effort, appears to have been misjudged and produced quitestrong negative student response.
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Emergent categories
The five initial categories discussed in the previous section proved analytically use-ful but insufficient. The content analysis was therefore followed up by thematic anal-ysis (Braun and Clarke 2006), in which the researchers sought further references toeffort apart from the initial categories. The additional five categories below wereidentified from the students’ focus group interview discussions:
� (F) Affective.� (V) The virtuous circle.� (P) Purpose, point and reasons for the task are clear to students.� (X) Doing extra, going out of one’s comfort zone and pushing one’s limits.� (Z) Focus and concentration.
In the following, these categories are discussed in detail with illustrativeexamples.
Effort as affective
Initially, the literature review prompted us to consider that academic subject-relatedinterest was a major factor of students’ making effort. Responses include the words‘fun’, ‘enjoy’ and ‘like’, signalling mood, feelings and attitude. Furthermore, the stu-dents’ concept of effort as interest/enjoyment is embedded in a ‘virtuous circle’ ofrelationships (see also below), mostly with teachers, though there was also somemention of parents and peers, whereby effort is encouraged in the student to goodeffect. Effort as affect therefore seems to be linked closely with the two followingemergent categories (below).
Virtuous circle
Virtuous circle2 was one of the prevailing categories in the students’ data, after gen-eral remarks conceiving of effort as trying harder and doing one’s best. The categorywas emerged from the responses, which indicated that the student makes an effort‘for the teacher he/she knows’ or ‘with the teacher’s help’, thus suggesting a positivesymbiotic relationship between student and teacher.
Alternatively, when the teacher makes an effort to present the lesson content inan accessible manner, the student seems more likely to make an effort. The follow-ing response from a girl supports the view that effort bears on a reciprocal relation-ship between teacher and students:
Yeah cos, some teachers treat you like children and others treat you like adults, and theones that treat you like adults I think you actually respect them more so you put moreeffort into their work.
Similarly, when the student feels able to try harder with the help of the teacher, thestudent makes an effort: ‘I think, when a teacher helps you, like gets you going, thenI think you can make more of an effort.’
Effort as virtuous circle also implies that the student can be more motivated tomake an effort not only by both teachers’ concrete help but merely by words ofencouragement:
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Yeah, well what helps me is like when if you’re doing a test if someone believes youcan do it and helps you then you make a bit of effort.
A boy commented on trying hard and getting a good grade, which makes them feelgood.
Or if you get a good kind of level in class you kind of feel like you’ve made a goodeffort I suppose.
In terms of the weight of evidence, the students set more store by this good feelingcreated between them and their teacher than their teachers did (below).
Effort as conditional on seeing the point or purpose
In the initial categories, effort was investigated in relation to achievement, implyingthe importance of goal orientation. This new category relates to the student seeingthe point or purpose in the tasks. For instance, they cited effort when they have apurpose in mind:
Erm, yeah, the same as [the other student], when I have like Geography assessment Iput in extra effort to like move up sets, or something …
The importance of recognising the purpose of an activity is addressed, and the pur-pose or point often set by teachers, especially for assessment:
If it’s for some of the assessments, Geography homework or Science homework, I willput more effort into that to try and get a better mark.
Furthermore, a student explained the reverse of this situation of withholding effort:
A lot of the time what stops me from making an effort is like when the teachers justthrow it all on you, they don’t explain what you’re doing at all and then they just put aload of work on your desk.
Having a purpose/point in the task, along with understanding, it is an important con-dition for students making effort.
Doing extra, going out of one’s comfort zone and pushing one’s limits
The student focus groups yielded several examples of the students talking aboutpushing themselves beyond their known limits, or going beyond teacher expecta-tions, when trying to pinpoint their understanding of what effort is: ‘I would say it’sgoing out of your comfort zone, yeah really trying’. Arguably this can be seen as anextension of effort as trying hard and doing one’s best, but these descriptions implythat effort was something ‘extra’ to students’ normal operating levels:
Trying a little harder than you usually do and just trying to do an extra bit.
Trying to put something in rather than trying to get away with the minimal amount ofeffort.
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The phrase ‘getting away with’ in this last remark is quite illuminating, implyingthat students are highly aware of teachers’ expected standards and adept at makingjudgements of when to give or withhold effort as they see fit.
The conception of effort implied in this category seems to be of a different nat-ure from effort as trying harder/one’s best, insofar as it implies that the student ismaking a choice, actively putting in effort in an attempt to obtain the preferred ordesirable outcome:
It kind of depends on how interesting the homework is, so if it’s something that youthink is kind of engaging then you’ll want to do it well so … or withholding effort.
When probed further:
Researcher: So you don’t do the work that you’re doing in the lesson and that’s notmaking an effort?
Student: Well you do but you don’t do it to your best abilities.
Effort is made in certain conditions, and sometimes, effort is controlled.
Effort as mental focus and concentration
There were some examples of students associating a concentrated mental focus witheffort, when they were asked ‘What does it look like to somebody from the outsidewhen somebody’s making an effort in class?’:
They [students] try really hard like, not chatting and stuff, like focused on it and stuff… although it was sometimes easier for students to describe conditions when this didnot happen.
Well I would say that what hinders me is like other people in the room like if they arenot concentrating and like disturbing the teacher or like making loud noises or likethrowing stuff across the room, then that sort of thing.
Taken together, the answers in all categories suggest that effort is strongly associatedwith attention, as Kahnemann argued, and is dependent on context-specific, rela-tional factors associated with affect.
The next section reports on the questionnaires with parents and teachers andfocus group interviews with teachers.
Parents
Fifty-one questionnaire responses were received from parents attending aParents’ Evening during the spring term. The data collection and analysis ofparent questionnaire predate the focus group interviews with the teachers. Ashortened version of the questionnaire prepared for the teachers was used,comprising two sections. First were open-ended questions, similar to thoseasked to teachers’:
Q1: How do you judge how much effort your child/ren is/are making in school?
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Q2: How do you judge how much effort your child/ren is/are making with their home-work?
The second section was quantitative and comprised statements to be rated on a five-point Likert scale, as per the student questionnaire, and related to the initial catego-ries arising from the literature review: general attitudes towards effort, effort asachievement, effort as perseverance, effort as good behaviour and reliability, andeffort as interest.
Responses to Q1 show that parents make a clear connection between effort andachievement. Parents are influenced by various forms of communication with theschool in judging their child’s level of effort in school, thus teachers’ conceptionswere important in defining those of parents.
Responses to Q2 show that most parents rely on their own judgements abouthomework, as opposed to teachers’ judgements about school work. The amount oftime spent by their children on their work was what the largest number of parentsidentified as being informative to their judgement.
The quantitative data analysis supports the findings from the qualitative sectionsto some extent: for instance, in showing parents consider effort to be important inschool and for homework. However, the relationship between effort and achieve-ment was not clear-cut. Although parents strongly agree that more effort leads tobetter marks (mean response 4.58), there was also somewhat weaker agreement thatunderstanding a subject does not depend on how hard you try (3.28), perhaps indi-cating that parents (like pupils) tend not to view students’ effort and getting goodmarks as necessarily or always related. Although many parents link reliability witheffort, most agree that making an effort is something other than doing what the tea-cher says. Parents’ responses regarding the relationship between understanding andeffort are not entirely consistent, as is the case with other groups, raising questionsabout how strongly parents view the relationship between effort, understanding andhigh marks at school.
Overall, the data analysis of the parents’ responses suggests that parents relymostly on information from teachers to inform their judgements about their children’seffort with school work, though to a lesser extent with homework. Parents’ concep-tions of effort seem largely to derive from teachers’ conceptions via sources of com-munication with teachers such as reports, journals and summative assessment.
Teachers
Quantitative analysis of teacher questionnaire
The responses from both students and parents point to the formative role that teach-ers’ conceptions of effort can have in relation to other groups’ conceptions. The fol-lowing analysis briefly addresses the initial categories based on the data generatedfrom the teachers’ questionnaires, followed by a more detailed consideration of theteacher focus groups’ interviews.
General attitudes to effort
Teachers agreed strongly with the general statements It is important for students tomake an effort with school work (mean 4.81) and It is important for students to
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make an effort with homework (4.56), though the response regarding homework wasnot quite as strong.
Effort as achievement
Teachers were strongly in support of the statement, Students get better marks in asubject if they put in more effort (4.62), but were lukewarm in their failure toendorse Understanding a subject doesn’t depend on how hard the students try(3.33). It seems as though teachers were happy to endorse a general connectionbetween effort and achievement, but were much less confident that this endorsementwould bear scrutiny in all cases, as students and parents had also been.
Effort as perseverance and reliability
Responses to all four items in this combined category lacked conviction, with meanscores ranging from 3.50 (Spending longer doesn’t always mean that students havetried harder) to 3.87 (Students who make an effort are reliable). The responses failto mark this out as a strong category, combined or otherwise.
Effort as interest and enjoyment
Teachers were strongly in agreement with the statement, Students make more of aneffort when they are interested in a subject (4.56) and quite strongly with, If a lessonisn’t fun, it is harder for students to make an effort (3.94). There is some evidencehere of a difference of emphasis from the students, who often cited non-academicinterest and enjoyment as motivating effort, rather than purely subject interest.
Overall, the pattern of quantitative responses of teachers is very similar to that ofstudents. This may suggest that there is a strong overlap between implicit definitionsof effort, though there may be some disparity between the groups regarding its moti-vation. Notably, neither group strongly associated effort with perseverance or reli-ability, while both associated it strongly with interest and enjoyment in some formor another.
Qualitative analysis of teacher questionnaire
The questionnaire had two qualitative sections. The first asked open questions andthe other offered sentence stems for completion, then a space in which respondentswere free to write additional comments. The prompts were as follows (Table 3):
Q1: How do you make judgements about a student’s effort with school work?
Q2: How do you judge how much effort a student makes with homework?
As sentence completion tasks:
A. Students generally make most effort in school when …
B. Students generally make most effort with homework when …
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C. In school work, students don’t put much effort into …
D. In homework, students do not put much effort into …
There were significant numbers of responses in three of the initial categories fromthe literature review: Effort as Interest, Effort as Reliability and Effort as Achieve-ment. Again, effort was little associated with perseverance. Teachers’ responsesacknowledge the perceived importance of students being interested in what they aredoing, citing enthusiasm, being engaged and being inspired by a subject. They citedqualities that may be attributed to reliable students to judge effort, including meetingdeadlines, completing work and standards of presentation. Comments relating toachievement, including focus on examinations, quality of work, progress and under-standing, comprised the fifth most popular amongst teachers overall.
Regarding the emergent categories, teachers were very aware of the importanceof students’ affective responses (F) and of their seeing the point of putting in someeffort (P). These two categories tallied more highly than the concept of Effort asAchievement, having the third and fourth highest totals.
Comparison of students and teachers can be done by isolating teachers’responses to Questions A and B, since these correspond to the qualitative section ofthe students’ questionnaire. The questions asked: when is effort made A/Q1 atschool? And B/Q2 at home? For students, affective responses dominated in bothquestions. Teachers acknowledged affective conditions as important, but haddifferent priorities: for school work the most teacher responses fell into students’academic interest; for homework, the most responses fell into emergent category P,whereby students see a purpose to their effort. To some extent, purely academicmotivation may be attributed by teachers to students, whilst the students see the situ-ation more in terms of enjoyment. There were several remarks from teachers linkingeffort with understanding the task. It seems that teachers and students are both awareof understanding as a prerequisite of effort.
Analysis of teacher focus group interviews
The 3 teacher focus groups comprised 10 teachers of varied experience, including 6men and 4 women. Content analysis (Cohen, Manion, and Morrison 2007) produced
Table 3. Teacher questionnaire: qualitative responses by category.
Code Q1 Q2 A B C D Total
A Trying hardest/best (general importance of effort) 1 – – – – – 1B Achievement 9 9 3 3 4 2 30C Perseverance – 1 – – 1 2 4D Reliability 9 13 6 3 4 4 39E Interest 4 – 16 6 12 4 42F Affective – – 13 8 12 4 37V Virtuous circle 2 2 5 9 3 4 26P Purpose/point – – 10 17 2 7 36X Doing extra 2 3 – – – – 5Z Focus/concentration 8 – 8 1 – 1 18
Note: n = number of separately identifiable comments.
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results in the following categories (the initial categories drawn from the literaturereview and the emergent categories: F–Z from the analysis of the students’ data)(Table 4).
Here, the initial categories drawn from the literature proved inadequate, with onlyC (perseverance) scoring significantly. This is an unexpected finding on two fronts:firstly, when interviewed, perseverance emerged strongly though it did not in writtenresponses; secondly, interest did not emerge strongly under interview conditions. Thispoints to the lack of concreteness and stability in some of these conceptions. Forexample, it is sometimes very difficult to make consistent and clear-cut decisionsabout the division between categories, interest and affective, and this may affect therelative weighting given to these in contrasting data-sets. Nevertheless, the teacherfocus groups did echo the responses from the other data. The teachers stressed theimportance of students seeing the point of activities, in terms of the link betweeneffort and achievement, and the importance of the ‘virtuous circle’.
Overall, the teacher questionnaire analysis mostly confirms that of the teacherinterviews, despite some obvious inconsistencies. Conceptions of effort as affective,contributing to a virtuous circle, and applied to something that has purpose or pointcame across as strong.
Discussion
To date, this is the first research to undertake a largely inductive analysis of themuch employed concept of effort in schooling, as opposed to adopting an unprobl-ematised conception of effort as an explanatory factor. The groups of students, par-ents and teachers differed somewhat in their conceptions. For Year 8 students, effortis important, but is not strongly connected to time spent or good behaviour. It islinked more with enjoyment than with difficulty. The students, who are not yet incharge of their career trajectories, may not yet associate increased effort with theattainment of desired goods. Rather, students consider they make more effort whenthey are having fun, and see effort as an element in a ‘virtuous circle’, comprisingenjoyable lessons, interesting work, a sense of achievement and work for whichthere is an obvious point or purpose. As such, effort is to some degree a negotiatingtool, to be increased or withheld as an indication that the work does not fulfil one ormore of these criteria.
Table 4. Teachers’ interview responses by category.
Code Gr C Gr B Gr A Total
A Trying hardest/best (general importance of effort) 16 17 1 34B Achievement 8 15 1 24C Perseverance 2 7 4 13D Reliability 0 0 1 1E Interest 0 0 1 1F Affective 5 4 4 13V Virtuous circle 13 2 4 19P Purpose/point 1 23 15 39X Doing extra 3 4 1 8Z Focus/concentration 0 4 3 7
Note: n = number of separately identifiable comments.
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Teachers were generally positive about the value of effort, associating it fairlystrongly with all the initial categories except perseverance. They employ quantity,along with quality of work, presentation and level of engagement as indicators ofstudent effort. There is some evidence, however, that teachers are only really com-mitted to a fairly thin conception of effort. In other words, they are prepared toacknowledge a link between effort, achievement and time spent on work, but theydo not feel able to commit to an acknowledgement of perseverance as a sufficient,or even in all cases a necessary condition. As with students, teachers deem effort asuseful and important, as a negotiating tool, in attempting to develop a virtuous circleof motivation and success. Parents drew their judgments about effort put into schoolwork, primarily from teachers and other school sources, secondarily from their ownreading of their children’s work and lastly from their children. For homework, theydrew on their own opinions more than information from teachers and schoolsources, and last of all their children. In sum, they are largely dependent on schoolsources of validation and rely very little on their children as sources of judgement.
Overall, there seems to be no essence of effort in the school context, nor anyagreed firm definition, as derived from experts such as psychologists or philosopherssuch as could validly be used, for example, as the basis for formal assessment ofeffort. There was some cohesion of the conception when both teachers and studentsspoke of effort as a two-way phenomenon with teachers instigating and maintainingtheir expectations of effort and students responding by meeting, or withholding frommeeting, those expectations. Students gained some autonomy through giving orwithholding their effort; teachers exercised some professional agency as they built-up different expectations of individual students over time. These two aspects revealeffort to be a multi-faceted, personalised, flexible tool of negotiation in the teacher–student relationship.
In sum, ‘effort’ is a fluid, shorthand term, for some, still defying a consensus indefinition and being afloat in a complex schooling process. The present researchaddressing what we mean by effort allows those involved in the research to be morereflexive about learning processes in the institutional context of schooling.
Implications
Taken together, the research reveals ‘effort’ in schooling is clearly an importantoperational concept for teachers, students and parents. This begs questions as tohow a shared understanding of effort can be developed between teachers, studentsand parents. We have begun exploring this question in terms of effort as scaffolding(Murakami, Stables, and McIntosh 2011). We addressed how a shared understandingof effort can help teachers scaffold the student’s learning and social development.As for an implication for educational policy, the current research shed light into theforms, content, and timing of assessment and contributes to the debate about the linkbetween motivation, effort and achievement in the school assessment practice(Brookhart 1997). Further work could refine more rigorously the tentative conclu-sions derived from this case study, to investigate not only whether such general pat-terns of conceiving effort hold from school to school, but also whether there areidentifiable differences between smaller sub-groups, for example, between low- andhigh-achieving children, between ethnic groups and between actors of differingsocio-economic status.
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Finally, the limited literature in areas such as this indicates a lack of researcheffort generally in the important but neglected field of lay professional andworkplace understandings of key operational concepts. In the case of schools,concepts such as ‘effort’ and ‘ability’ are frequently drawn on in everyday teacherand (perhaps to a lesser extent) student and parent discourse, but such uses areunlikely to be merely applications of the latest expert thinking in fields such aspsychology. More needs to be known about how such key elements in institutionaldiscourses are constructed and negotiated, and this varies between actors.
Alternatively, or additionally, it might be argued that educators would be betteradvised to substitute terms such as ‘effort’ with more concrete concepts, such asspending longer on task, paying more attention in class or presenting work moreneatly. This would at least have the advantage of clarifying the terms of the dis-course between teacher and taught.
Notes1. Along with quantitative data, the student questionnaire generated qualitative data as it
included two open questions:Q1: When do you make the most effort at school?Q2: When do you make the most effort at home?
2. This is a concept widely used in studies in management and political economy. We usethis term to refer to an iterative process in learning (see Pulido and Hambrick 2008). Forexample, putting effort exerts a positive impact on learning.
Notes on contributorsAndrew Stables is a professor of Education and philosophy at the University of Roehampton.His research interests are theory and philosophy of education, and educational semiotics. Hisrecent publications includes: Childhood and the Philosophy of Education: An Anti-Aristote-lian Perspective (2008/2011); Be(com)ing Human: Semiosis and the Myth of Reason (2012).
Kyoko Murakami is a lecturer in Education at the University of Bath. Her research interestsinclude discourse analysis, discursive psychology, social remembering and classroom interac-tion. Her recent publications includes: Time for Memory: Beyond Spatial Metaphors, Culture& Psychology (2012); Discursive Psychology of Remembering and Reconciliation (2012);Culture in Action: A Discursive Approach, Oxford Handbook of Culture and Psychology(2012).
Shona McIntosh is a PhD Student at the University of Bath. Her interests include processesof learning, teachers and teaching, and professionalism in teaching. Her recent publicationinclude: Lifting the Lid on Learning - Some Effects of Reflection Discussed, Research Jour-neys: Revealing the Doctoral Process (2013).
Susan Martin is a senior lecturer in Education at the University of Bath. Her research inter-ests are student learning, assessment and professional development.
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Wittgenstein, L. 1967. Philosophical Investigations. Oxford: Blackwell.
Appendix 1Student questionnaire quantitative section item statements:
(1) The more time you spend on your work, the more effort you are making.(2) Understanding a subject doesn’t depend on how hard you try.(3) Not making an effort in school doesn’t mean you are lazy.(4) I like making an effort with my homework.(5) Spending longer on your work doesn’t always mean you’ve tried harder.(6) You get better marks in a subject if you put in more effort.(7) If a lesson isn’t fun it’s harder to make an effort.(8) People who always make an effort do well in school.(9) Making an effort doesn’t always get you better marks.(10) I like making an effort in school.(11) If you are good at a subject there’s no point trying hard.(12) Making an effort takes a lot of time.(13) It isn’t worth spending longer than you need on your work.(14) It’s easier to make an effort in something if you are interested in it.(15) You will do better in school if you make an effort.(16) If you understand something, you don’t need to spend long on it.(17) Students who make an effort are well-behaved.(18) Making an effort with homework is not important.(19) In group work, you can rely on students who make an effort.(20) It’s important to make an effort in school.(21) Making an effort isn’t the same as doing what teachers say.(22) Students who make an effort are more popular.(23) Making an effort in school is not important.(24) I don’t like making an effort with school work.(25) Making an effort makes you unpopular in school.(26) You should never give up making an effort in your school work.(27) I make more of an effort when I am interested in a subject.(28) It’s hard to make an effort when you’re not interested in something.(29) Making an effort doesn’t make you more interested in something.(30) You make more effort when the lessons are more fun.
Research Papers in Education 647
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Appendix 2Qualitative data – Student questionnaire responses (n = separately identifiable comments).Q1: When do you make the most effort at school?
Q2: When do you make the most effort at home?
Appendix 3The qualitative section was designed to be similar to the teachers’ questionnaire’s qualitativequestions in order to ease exploration of similarities and differences of conception acrossthese two groups within the school:
Q1: How do you judge how much effort your child/ren is/are making in school?Q2: How do you judge how much effort your child/ren is/are making with their
homework?
Category Rank B G
Work conditions 1 30 19Own motives 2 18 18Positive associations 3 15 12Work subject 4 7 6Assessment 5 4 7Future motives 6 – 2Additionally:Cultural Compliance or WS – not enough detail to be clear 17 30
Category Rank B G
Positive associations 1 49 54Lesson content/conditions 2 16 23Lesson subject 3 12 26Assessment 4 3 6Cultural compliance 4 3 6Future Motives 4 3 6Negative Associations 7 5 3Own Motives 8 2 4
648 A. Stables et al.
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