1 ‘Trying hard’: Teachers’ and students’ perspectives on Year 8 students’ effort in learning Andrea McDonough and Caroline Smith Australian Catholic University andrea.mcdonough@acu.edu.au carolline.smith@acu.edu.au Paper Code MCDO81037 This paper considers the aspect of ‘trying hard’, or effort, a characteristic of a positive orientation towards learning, and a key element in student self-regulation. We have taken ‘trying hard’ to include interrelated factors such as persistence, effort, control over learning and dealing with distraction, essentially the processes of motivation and volition. In this paper we examine the notion of ‘trying hard’ or trying one’s best. This study focuses on mainly on students’ perspectives on trying hard, as it is commonly referred to in school settings. Introduction There have been sustained attempts over the last decade to explain and address student disengagement in the middle years of schooling (students aged 10 to 14) in Australia. This disengagement has been variously attributed to irrelevant, unchallenging curricula, inappropriate student tasks, ineffectual learning and teaching processes as well as changed cultural and technological conditions (Luke et al., 2003). In earlier research related to the present project, the persistence of students was studied through posing them a range of increasingly difficult problems in mathematics (Sullivan & McDonough, 2007; Sullivan, Tobias, & McDonough, 2006) and English (Sullivan, McDonough, & Prain, 2005) with the intention that eventually nearly all students would confront a task which was difficult for them. Students were asked to rate their self- confidence and achievement, their persistence, their perception of the value of schooling, and what constitutes successful learning. It was found that the students were surprisingly confident in a self-report of their own ability in an interview situation. They perceived effort as important and themselves as trying hard. The students also seemed to have goals focused on aiming to please the teacher by getting questions correct and scoring well on tests. However, based on observations in classes, a different picture emerged. Students overall seemed neither confident in their learning nor did they try hard (Sullivan & McDonough, 2007). This disparity was perhaps due to students being willing to try harder within the one- on-one interview situation, or due to students having a different understanding from their teachers of what “trying hard” in the classroom might entail. Students also may not be aware of, or may have little knowledge of, self-regulatory strategies, thus limiting their ability to use them (Ames, 1992).