Abstract
Almost anything worth doing takes effort, so it is no surprise that effort has played such a central role in how researchers, theoreticians, instructors, and even students think about student learning and achievement. In this special issue, the authors of the target articles explore the importance of effort to students’ self-regulated learning within multiple domains. To further support research progress on effort, we distinguish between objective effort as a direct causal agent of learning gains and effort as a student perception. We argue that understanding effort as a student perception shows promise for discovering ways to improve self-regulated learning and student achievement. In developing these arguments, we consider the contribution of the target articles to five themes relevant to metacognitively driven self-regulated learning, with the aim of fostering progressive research programs aimed at revealing the potential roles of effort in student achievement.
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Notes
Lay use of the term effort (“conscious exertion of power: hard work; example, a job requiring time and effort,” Merriam-Webster, n.d.) would imply the same—that is, more effort is indicated by working harder and not simply by working longer. Even so, students may say that they are using more effort when they use more time, and we return to the role of time in students’ perceptions of effort in the next section.
This claim is apparent from Bjork and Bjork (2011) who define desirable difficulties as “better conditions of learning that, while apparently creating difficulty, actually lead to more durable and flexible learning” (p. 58), making it clear that it is the conditions that are desirable—not the difficulties per se.
References
Note: The target articles are not currently in references, and to complete the commentary, we will need page numbers for all quotations.
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Dunlosky, J., Badali, S., Rivers, M.L. et al. The Role of Effort in Understanding Educational Achievement: Objective Effort as an Explanatory Construct Versus Effort as a Student Perception. Educ Psychol Rev 32, 1163–1175 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-020-09577-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-020-09577-3