Factor Focus: Effort Focus (Growth Mindset)

The "Factor Focus" series is designed to review various noncognitive factors and their relevance to student success.

If you've ever taken a yoga class, you've probably heard the phrase, "It’s a yoga practice, not a yoga perfect." The strive for improvement is a key element in yoga. As someone who came to yoga after years of more traditional "ball sports," this was always helpful for me. I'd never emphasized flexibility. Never thought about my breathing. And strength, in my mind, only came from weights. The emphasis on effort, rather than perfection, in yoga is helpful regardless of your experience, but particularly if you're new, uninitiated, and perhaps feeling a bit vulnerable about that.

Despite the fact that education is arguably the most transformative experience any of us will ever go through, students often don't view it as a process of effort, growth, and progress. The phrase I loathe hearing just about more than any other - "I'm just not good at math" - is the quintessence of this sentiment. For many reasons, students often attribute their success to innate ability rather than understanding that all of us - even the educator at the front of the room - are learning. We're just at different places on that path.

In our last post about Persistence, I alluded to this issue when discussing Effort Focus and growth mindset. While Effort Focus is closely related to Carol Dweck's concept of growth mindset, it distills that idea down to a singular perception: is success a product of effort or ability?

Growth mindset is often misunderstood as a call for positivity - encouraging students to simply believe they can succeed if they try. But this misses the central insight of the theory. At its core, growth mindset concerns how students interpret the process of success. Certainly, many behaviors and attitudes follow from that belief, but the starting point is much simpler: do students believe their effort can meaningfully influence their outcomes?

What Is Effort Focus?

Within ISSAQ, Effort Focus refers to students’ beliefs about the role of effort in academic success. Specifically, it reflects whether students view effort as a meaningful and effective pathway to improvement, rather than attributing outcomes primarily to fixed ability or external circumstances.

This perspective aligns closely with attribution theory, which examines how individuals explain the causes of success and failure (Weiner, 1985). According to this framework, students may attribute outcomes to factors such as ability, effort, task difficulty, or luck. The fundamental difference in these attributions is their locus of control - is it something I can change or not? Effort occupies a unique position because it is both internal and controllable (not to mention incredibly effective!). When students believe effort influences outcomes, they are more likely to see future performance as something they can change.

This is where Effort Focus overlaps with Carol Dweck’s work on growth mindset. Students who hold a growth mindset believe that ability can develop through effort, strategy, and feedback (Dweck, 2006). That belief influences how they respond to difficulty. Instead of interpreting setbacks as evidence that they lack ability, they are more likely to interpret them as signals that more effort or a different approach may be needed.

Importantly, Effort Focus does not suggest that ability, preparation, or prior knowledge are irrelevant. Anyone who has taught a college course knows that students arrive with different levels of preparation and skill. Rather, Effort Focus reflects whether students believe their actions can meaningfully influence their progress. Students who hold that belief are more likely to invest effort in ways that support learning.

In this way, Effort Focus captures a foundational belief about how success works. When students believe effort matters, they are more likely to engage in the behaviors that allow effort to translate into improvement.

How Does Effort Focus Impact Success?

Research consistently shows that students’ beliefs about effort influence their motivation, persistence, and academic performance. Students who view effort as productive are more likely to engage deeply with course material, adopt effective learning strategies, and remain engaged when coursework becomes challenging (Dweck, 2006; Zimmerman, 2002).

Attribution research has long demonstrated that students who attribute setbacks to controllable factors such as effort are more likely to persist than those who attribute failure to fixed ability (Weiner, 1985). When students believe outcomes are outside their control, additional effort appears pointless. When they believe effort can influence outcomes, continued effort becomes rational.

Effort Focus also shapes how students interpret academic difficulty. Students who believe success depends primarily on innate ability may interpret difficulty as evidence that they do not belong in a course or field. In contrast, students who view effort as central to improvement are more likely to see difficulty as a natural part of the learning process.

These beliefs influence a wide range of academic behaviors, including study strategies, engagement with feedback, and willingness to seek help. Meta-analytic research examining psychological predictors of academic performance consistently identifies effort-related beliefs and self-regulation behaviors as important contributors to student outcomes (Richardson et al., 2012).

This is one of those moments when understanding the theory is really helpful. Often times, when we seek to understand students' behavior, we miss our attributions. A student who stops showing up to class is labeled unmotivated. Students who don't raise their hand are disengaged. Conversely, a lot of the conversation around growth mindset has lumped the potential positive outcomes (i.e., pursuing feedback, persistence, welcoming challenges, etc.) as part of this core belief about effort.

Both assumptions are untrue because they fail to see the whole process of student behavior. This is why early intervention is so important, particularly with a factor like Effort Focus. If we can instill this way of thinking early, we can pave the path to much greater success down the road. What's more, once we find our self far down an unprodutive path, it's much harder to go back.

How Can We Foster Effort Focus?

Because Effort Focus reflects students’ beliefs about how learning works, it can be shaped through institutional messaging, instructional practices, and feedback processes. Students develop these beliefs not only from what they are told explicitly, but also from how learning environments are structured.

Communicating that learning is a process

Institutions can support Effort Focus by consistently communicating that learning develops over time through practice and feedback. Orientation programs, first-year seminars, and advising conversations provide opportunities to frame college as a developmental process rather than a test of innate ability. When students understand that improvement is expected, effort becomes more meaningful.

Emphasizing Process in feedback

Feedback plays a powerful role in shaping students’ beliefs about effort. Feedback that highlights strategy, revision, and improvement reinforces the idea that effort leads to progress (Hattie & Timperley, 2007). When feedback focuses only on outcomes or grades, students may struggle to see how their actions contributed to the result.

Designing opportunities for iteration

Students are more likely to value effort when they can observe its impact. Courses that allow revision, scaffold major assignments, or include multiple low-stakes assessments give students opportunities to apply effort and see improvement over time. These structures reinforce the idea that learning is iterative rather than a single high-stakes event.

Align Academic Support with Strategy Development

Tutoring, supplemental instruction, and learning centers can reinforce Effort Focus when they emphasize strategies rather than simply correcting answers. Helping students understand how to approach problems differently demonstrates that effort, when paired with effective strategies, leads to progress.

What Faculty Can Do to Support Effort Focus?

Explicitly discussing how expertise develops, providing opportunities for revision, and sharing examples of improvement can reinforce the idea that effort contributes to learning. Instructors can also normalize challenge as a routine part of the learning process. When faculty frame difficulty as expected rather than exceptional, students are less likely to interpret effort as evidence that they are struggling or falling behind.

Simple instructional practices can reinforce these ideas. Reflective activities such as exam wrappers, discussions of study strategies, or brief conversations about how learning occurs can help students recognize the connection between effort, strategy, and outcomes.

Conclusion

Effort has always been central to learning, but students’ beliefs about effort may be just as important as the effort itself. Within ISSAQ, Effort Focus captures whether students view effort as a meaningful pathway to improvement or whether they interpret success and failure primarily through the lens of ability.

When students believe their actions can influence outcomes, they are more likely to invest effort, persist through challenges, and engage in the learning process. Institutions and faculty play an important role in shaping these beliefs through the messages they communicate about how success occurs.

By fostering Effort Focus, colleges and universities can help students understand that learning is not a test of who they are, but a process of what they do over time.

References

• Dweck, C. S. (2006). Mindset: The new psychology of success. Random House.

• Hattie, J., & Timperley, H. (2007). The power of feedback. Review of Educational Research, 77(1), 81–112.

• Richardson, M., Abraham, C., & Bond, R. (2012). Psychological correlates of university students’ academic performance: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 138(2), 353–387.

• Weiner, B. (1985). An attributional theory of achievement motivation and emotion. Psychological Review, 92(4), 548–573.

• Zimmerman, B. J. (2002). Becoming a self-regulated learner: An overview. Theory Into Practice, 41(2), 64–70.