In this study, we examined and compared the beliefs of undergraduate nursing students at a healthcare-focused university in central Japan regarding their abilities to learn English and nursing and sustain effort in their studies. Specifically, the purposes of this research were to learn how Japanese nursing students' mindsets and effort regulation differed across the domains of English and nursing and to determine the extent to which mindsets can predict students' effort regulation in these domains. Data were collected through an online questionnaire (N = 132). We found that students' mindsets and effort regulation differed across the domains of English and nursing with no significant differences by year of study. Growth mindsets and effort regulation were significantly higher and fixed mindsets were significantly lower in nursing than in English. Mindsets in nursing were found to predict effort regulation in both nursing and English, but mindsets in English were found only to predict effort regulation in English. The findings offer valuable insights into the learning beliefs of Japanese nursing students and may provide ideas about how to better motivate nursing students in their studies. Furthermore, the study contributes to the understanding of how mindsets vary across domains and cultural contexts.
Keywords: English as a foreign language; Mindset; effort regulation; motivation; nursing education; persistence; self-efficacy.