Abstract:

Academic achievement, which has a critical role in preparing students for their future careers and being successful in many competitive fields, is undoubtedly one of the most important outcomes of their formal education life. For this reason, researches are conducted on many internal and external factors that contribute to the academic achievement of students. In this study, the mediating role of metacognitive processes in the relationship between university students' personality traits such as responsibility, openness to experience, agreeableness, neuroticism and extraversion and academic achievement was tested. Structural equation modeling was used in the research. The population of the research includes students attending the faculty of education of a state university located in the west of Turkey. The sample consisted of 1207 students determined by stratified sampling method. The Metacognitive Awareness Inventory developed by Schraw and Dennison (1994) and adapted into Turkish by Akın, Abacı and Çetin (2007) to measure students' metacognition in the study and the Adjective-Based Personality Test developed by Bacanlı, İlhan, and Aslan (2007) was used to measure students' personality traits. The personal information form developed by the researcher was used for demographic information and the general academic grade point average was used to determine the academic achievement of the students. As a result of the research, emotional instability and agreeableness dimensions of personality have a negative and significant relationship with metacognition; openness to experience and responsibility factors have a positive and significant relationship with metacognition. On the other hand, it was found that extraversion did not have a significant relationship with metacognition. It was determined that there was a positive and significant relationship between metacognition and academic achievement. The research hypothesis that metacognition plays a mediating role in the relationship between university students' personality traits such as responsibility, openness to experience, agreeableness, neuroticism and academic achievement has been confirmed. Factors other than extraversion of personality traits affect students' metacognition, and metacognition affects academic success. The relationship between personality and academic achievement is established through metacognition.

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