Effort is often viewed as one component of the broader construct of school engagement (Fredricks et al., 2004). Within the literature on school engagement, effort is considered to be an aspect of both cognitive and
behavioral engagement. Cognitive engagement refers to students’ psychological investment; it consists of willingness to exert the energy required to
understand and master an activity or task. Behavioral engagement draws on the idea of participation; it refers to students’ actual execution of an activity or task in school. As a whole, effort is the behavioral manifestation of engagement defined as “students’ energized, enthusiastic, emotionally positive, cognitively focused interactions with academic activities” (Kindermann, 2007, p. 1186). The methodological implication in applying this definition is that these cognitively focused interactions should be observable. We used this criterion in selecting articles for this review (as described earlier) and identifying conceptual dimensions from the literature.1
Given the range of behaviors observed across the 32 studies, the definitions used by the researchers reflect different dimensions of effort guided by the aims of their own individual research questions, rather than a particular theoretical perspective. Nevertheless, we identified two conceptual dimensions most frequently described: degree of effort and degree of specificity. As a means to develop guidelines for assessing measurement properties of this construct, we briefly define and discuss each of these dimensions in turn.
1 Discerning (or arguing) whether effort is distinct from engagement or a component of
engagement is beyond the scope of this chapter. We instead adopt the directive from the engagement literature that effort comprises observable behaviors. We only draw on concepts and themes from the engagement literature insofar as they help elucidate our understanding of effort.
Degree of Effort
Degree of effort involves the “overall amount of energy or work expended over the course of learning” (Agbuga & Xiang, 2008, p. 181). The exertion of energy requires that students meet at least the minimum requirements for a given class or task (such as showing up to social studies class on time) and express motivation for and a personal investment in the given class or task (such as working hard on assignments in social studies class). Not all levels of effort put forth by students are the same, and therefore the literature differentiates effort according to degree, or procedural versus substantive effort. In general, procedural effort focuses on the completion of a task, whereas substantive effort focuses on active involvement in the task. Procedural effort consists of completing a learning/academic task, complying with school and classroom rules, and exerting the minimal adequate effort needed to function and to progress through school. Examples of procedural effort include coming to class on time, completing homework assignments, and paying attention during class. Substantive effort reflects moving beyond mere compliance toward taking an active role in learning, such as taking the lead on class projects, spending extra time studying for exams and quizzes, and generally working hard in school.
Some researchers contend that only substantive behaviors can truly be considered effort (e.g., Lee & Anderson, 1993).2 However, we adopt the
procedural-substantive distinction because studies of effort use this distinction when discerning different forms of behavioral engagement to maintain conceptual consistency with this established literature. In addition, we feel there is not enough empirical evidence or theoretical guidance to discount procedural behaviors as indicators of effort. In general, studies measuring compliance/cooperation measured procedural effort, whereas those measuring active participation/working hard measured substantive effort.
To capture the full range of behaviors used to measure effort, we also identify measures of noncompliance. Noncompliance refers to behaviors that disrupt one’s ability to exert effort, such as not coming to class on time, not completing homework assignments, or daydreaming during class. These measures indicate a lack of effort and are used as proxies for student disengagement in the studies that we reviewed.
2 Lee and Anderson (1993) contend that “students who engage in tasks in a superficial manner
may be responding rationally to a situation that affords them no real opportunity for deeper understanding” (p. 596). We present measures of both procedural and substantive effort for completeness.
Degree of Specificity
The second conceptual dimension of effort identified in the literature is degree of task specificity. We identified two levels of task specificity: task- oriented behaviors and general achievement behaviors. Task-oriented behaviors are particular to an isolated problem or project, whereas general achievement behaviors pertain to effort exerted to do well in school overall or in a particular class overall. Gilmore, Cuskelly, and Purdie (2003) further define task-oriented effort as mastery motivation, or the persistent manner in which a student “solve[s] a problem or master[s] a skill or task which is at least moderately challenging for him or for her” (p. 412). In some cases, the researchers likened task-oriented effort to the concept of flow—complete concentration, absorption, and focus when performing a specific activity (Ainley et al., 2008; Shernoff & Vandell, 2007). Consider a student taking high school algebra. This particular student gets the highest scores in her class but on one morning she becomes stuck on a difficult algebra problem, and she spends most of the class time reviewing her notes and revisiting the text to figure it out. She is completely consumed in the problem and pays no attention to the side conversations of the students sitting next to her. The next day when she comes to class, it is back to her regular routine of breezing through her algebra coursework because she already learned most of the concepts in pre- algebra. If one were to ask this student how hard she worked on the difficult algebra problem today as opposed to how hard she worked in school today, very different responses may result. This variation in the specificity of the question has direct bearing on how effort is measured, a topic we take up in the next section.