Impact Of Locus Of Control And Self Esteem On The Academic Achievement Orientations Of Private And Public Sector University Students

Problem of the study was to explore the impact of locus of control and self-esteem on the academic achievement orientations of private and public sector university students, it further aimed to investigate the impact of demographic variations such as gender, age, discipline, number of siblings, birth order, family income in determining the type of locus of control, level of self-esteem and level of academic achievement orientations of private and public sector university students. In this study for the measurement of self esteem Factor Loading Self Esteem Scale developed by Rifai was used (1999), it was consisted of 29 items and 4 factors such as Self Acceptance, Academic Competence, Physical & Social Acceptance, and Self Competence. For the measurement of locus of control Rotter’s Locus of control Scale consisted of 29 items was used. Achievement orientation attitude scale developed by Ansari was used to measure achievement orientations, which was consisted of 10 items. Rresearch was carried out in two parts, part I was pilot study which was carried out on a sample of 100 Master level university students. After data collection, psychometric properties were determined and scales were finalized for main study. Part 2 was consisted of main study in which data was collected through stratified random sampling technique. The sample consisted of 510 respondents among them 256 were male and 254 were female students belong to various departments of 138 from social sciences,130 from natural sciences,122 from management sciences and 120 from humanities . Data was analyzed with various statistics, results provided an insight that students differ in terms of self-esteem, locus of control and achievement orientations, higher academic achievement orientations create love for learning and a sense of internal locus of control in the learners that enable learners to exhibit higher motivation towards their academics without extrinsic rewards. Results revealed that students of public sector universities have internal locus of control, higher self-esteem and higher achievement orientations. Female students have higher self-esteem and achievement orientation , whereas male students have internal locus of control. It is recommended that teachers may use appropriate pedagogical and motivation practices to inculcate internal locus of control, higher self-esteem and higher academic achievement orientations among university students. It is also recommended that at university level students may also learn self-management and develop internal locus of control, positive self-esteem and ought to work hard in order to achieve their academic goals without external push