The Relationship Between Metacognition, Self
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View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by DigitalCommons@Florida International University Florida International University FIU Digital Commons FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations University Graduate School 3-28-2014 The Relationship between Metacognition, Self- Actualization, and Well-Being among University Students: Reviving Self-Actualization as the Purpose of Education Yalda Amir Kiaei Florida International University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd Part of the Curriculum and Instruction Commons, Educational Psychology Commons, and the Social and Philosophical Foundations of Education Commons Recommended Citation Amir Kiaei, Yalda, "The Relationship between Metacognition, Self-Actualization, and Well-Being among University Students: Reviving Self-Actualization as the Purpose of Education" (2014). FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations. Paper 1367. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/1367 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the University Graduate School at FIU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of FIU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY Miami, Florida THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN METACOGNITION, SELF-ACTUALIZATION, AND WELL-BEING AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS: REVIVING SELF-ACTUALIZATION AS THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION A dissertation submitted in the partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in CURRICULUM AND INSTRUCTION by Yalda Amir Kiaei 2014 To: Dean Delia C. Garcia College of Education This dissertation, written by Yalda Amir Kiaei, and entitled The Relationship between Metacognition, Self-Actualization, and Well-being among University Students: Reviving Self-Actualization as the Purpose of Education, having been approved in respect to style and intellectual content, is referred to you for judgment. We have read this dissertation and recommend that it be approved. _______________________________________ Marilyn Montgomery _______________________________________ Laura Dinehart _______________________________________ Joanne Sanders-Reio _______________________________________ Thomas G. Reio, Jr., Major Professor Date of Defense: March 28, 2014 The dissertation of Yalda Amir Kiaei is approved. _______________________________________ Dean Dean Delia C. Garcia College of Education _______________________________________ Dean Lakshmi N. Reddi University Graduate School Florida International University, 2014 ii © Copyright 2014 by Yalda Amir Kiaei All rights reserved. iii DEDICATION To the love of my life, Rambod, who has always been lovingly by my side throughout this entire process and has supported me with his kind patience when I was most impatient, with his pride that he has always taken in my work and my capabilities, with his encouraging companionship, and with his words of wisdom when I needed them most. And with love to my mother and father, Akram and Mir Yahya, whose support and constant love and prayers have sustained me throughout my life. iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. Thomas G. Reio, my dissertation chair. His understanding, support, and encouragement allowed me to believe in the potentials in my ideas, and his invaluable insights helped me to compose my ideas into this dissertation project. His trust in my work and my self-sufficiency provided me with a great opportunity for personal growth, for which I will always be grateful. I deeply appreciate his mentorship that has made all this possible. I would also like to thank my dissertation committee members, Dr. Sanders-Reio, Dr. Marilyn Montgomery, and Dr. Dinehart, for their precious comments on my proposal and dissertation draft and for their kind support in this project. I am also very thankful to the Florida International University Graduate School for providing me with the Dissertation Year Fellowship and to Lennar Corporation and FIU College of Education for providing me with Lennar Corporation Scholarship, a merit-based College of Education Private Scholarship, during the last year of my doctoral study. I am also sincerely grateful to all scholars who kindly (publicly or personally) granted me permission to use their instruments for my study and to have the questionnaires fully or partially in my dissertation: Drs. Watson, Clark, and Tellegen for the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule, Dr. E. Diener for the Satisfaction with Life Scale, Dr. A. S. Waterman for the Questionnaire for Eudaimonic Well-Being, Dr. D. L. Debats for the Life Regard Index-Revised, Drs. G. Leclerc and R. Lefrançois for the Measure of Actualization of Potentials, Dr. C. Robitschek for the Personal Growth Initiative Scale, Dr. K. M. Sheldon for the measures of Goal-Concordance and Need- v Satisfaction, Dr. R. A. Emmons for the Striving Assessment Scales, Dr. M. Milyavskaya for the measure of Goal-Inspiration, Dr. C. S. Carver for the Brief COPE, and Drs. G. Schraw and R. S. Dennison for the Metacognitive Awareness Inventory. In addition, I would like to express special gratitude to Dr. Linda Bliss and Dr. Isadore Newman, for their invaluable support and for their influential feedback during the Dissertation Bootcamp and in reviewing my proposal and the dissertation, and to Dr. Leonard Bliss for his help with the IRB process and more. I am and always will be grateful for their mentorship throughout my doctoral studies, which made this experience that much more memorable. There are many people, to whom I owe very special thanks. Dr. Bang, Dr. Beladi, Dr. Leonard Bliss, Dr. Linda Bliss, Dr. Iuspa, Dr. Thomas Reio, Dr. Spears-Bunton, Dr. Dinehart, Dr. Blanchard, Dr, Bleiker, Dr. Lazarus, Dr. Mesbahi, and my caring and supporting TA colleagues Daniel, Elizabeth, Jennifer, Hamid, Mohammad, Natan, Reza, Ron, and Xuan, all of whom kindly supported me in my data collection. Caprila Almeida in the COE Office of Graduate Studies is an asset for the college; she always kindly answered my numerous questions about the dissertation process. I couldn’t have done this without their help. I would also like to gratefully and sincerely thank my friends who gave me their time by participating in my small pilot study and providing feedback about the clarity of the instructional statements and the items, especially Ali Hadji, Faraaz, Ildiko, Manny, Rira, Sadegh, and Sanaz and all who participated in my study. This project was not possible without the kindness of each and every one of them. vi Many thanks to my lovely friend, Zahra, my master editor, who has always been there for me to proofread my pieces, and thanks to my lovely sister, for her warm presence beside me and her assistance in keeping me focused during my dissertation writing. And thanks to God for the many kind and caring people around me throughout this process this far from home, who have made the entire experience all the more unforgettable. vii ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN METACOGNITION, SELF-ACTUALIZATION, AND WELL-BEING AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS: REVIVING SELF-ACTUALIZATION AS THE PURPOSE OF EDUCATION by Yalda Amir Kiaei Florida International University, 2014 Miami, Florida Professor Thomas G. Reio, Jr., Major Professor This non-experimental, correlational study (N = 513) examined the relationships among self-actualization, well-being, and metacognition. Need-satisfaction and non- defensiveness were also tested as mediators in the relationship between metacognition and self-actualization. A battery of paper-and-pencil self-report measures was administered to a sample of undergraduate and graduate students in a public university in South Florida. Correlational and hierarchical regression analyses and structural equation modeling for mediational analysis were used to test the hypotheses. The results largely supported the hypotheses with only a few exceptions. Students who demonstrated higher level of self-actualization experienced higher well- being as well (the result of this hypothesized relationship was equivocal for parent students, n = 61). Moreover, need-satisfaction and non-defensiveness were found to be significantly and positively associated with self-actualization, providing preliminary supporting evidence for Maslow’s (1968) and Rogers’ (1951, 1961) theories of self- actualization. In addition, students with higher levels of general metacognitive viii competence were more likely to demonstrate higher level of need-satisfaction, non- defensiveness, self-actualization, and well-being (the result of the third hypothesized relationship was equivocal for female immigrant education students, n = 78). Further, metacognition and need-satisfaction, and metacognition and non- defensiveness shared common variance in predicting self-actualization. The relationship between metacognition and self-actualization was mediated by need-satisfaction and non- defensiveness, except for non-education students (n = 201), for whom no mediational effect was detected by non-defensiveness. In sum, the findings imply that general metacognitive competence, which can be taught as a set of skills, theoretically contributes to students’ self-actualization and well- being. This study provides support for a conceptual model of self-actualization, which introduces this phenomenon as a goal-oriented process that is essential to students’ well- being and can be attained by exercising metacognition.