Locus of Control as a Factor of the Metacognitive Sphere of Personality and Its Specificity in Educational Activity

Abstract

Introduction. The purpose of the work was to study, establish and explain the regularities of the influence of the locus of control on the organization of the metacognitive sphere of personality, including in the conditions of educational activity. This goal is relevant in theoretical and applied terms, since it is devoted to an important, but practically unexplored problem of the determinative influence of one of the main personal qualities that is the locus of control on the content and organization of the metacognitive sphere of personality. As part of the realization of this goal, the role of the locus of control in relation to the main metacognitive processes and qualities and their structural organization is revealed and explained for the first time. Materials and methods of research. The most valid and reliable methods developed in modern metacognitivism were used: the method of “Metacognitive awareness of activity” (G. Shrow, R. Denison); the method of MAI D. Everson; methods for the diagnosis of metacognitive inhibition, as well as the author’s methods for the diagnosis of individual measures of the severity of reflexivity (A. V. Karpov, V. V. Ponomareva), metathinking and metamemory. Methods of mathematical and statistical processing (ANOVA) and methods based on the methodology of structural and psychological analysis were used. The study involved 172 people – students and teachers of universities in Yaroslavl and Moscow. The results of the study. Statistically significant correlations of the individual measure of the development of metacognitive factors, as well as the degree and nature of their organization on the properties of the locus of control (p<0.05) were revealed. For the first time, it was established that there are regular connections and relationships between the locus of control as a generalized personal quality and an individual measure of the severity of reflexivity, manifested in a number of complementary aspects and explicating their multidimensional complex nature. The internal locus of control is in direct connection with the measure of the severity of reflexivity, whereas the external locus of control is associated with a relatively lower degree of its severity. Discussion of the results and conclusion. A number of new data have been obtained that reveal and explain the general pattern consisting in the existence of significant inter-determinational relations between the locus of control and reflexivity, as well as the main components of the metacognitive sphere of personality. The revealed patterns of connections between the locus of control and reflexivity are enhanced under the influence of activity determination, that is, on the contingent of subjects implementing educational activity. This phenomenon, consisting in the strengthening influence of professional activity on the functional role of the locus of control factor in it, is designated as the phenomenon of activity facilitation.