An-Najah Staff

The aim of this study was to investigate The “Locus of Control” among Palestinian students in two educational settings:  Conventional and distance educational setting.

The relationship between The Locus of Control and students’ gender, prior high school academic achievement and their specialization in it, present university academic achievement and their specialization in it, and university year’s level was investigated.

A (414) stratified random sample was drawn from Al-Quds Open University as a representative of distance education, and An- Najah National University as a representative of conventional education.

The data were analyzed by using “Pearson r” in one hand, and the analysis of variance on the other.  These statistics revealed the following results:

1- Palestinian students were generally tend to be internally oriented students more than externally ones.

2- Students of distance education were less external (E-I = 9.43) than their counterpart in a conventional setting ( E-I = 10.39).

3- Males in both sitting of education were significantly ( P< .0001) less external than females.

4- Students who had a job during study were significantly (P< .005) less external than who had not.

5- There was no relationship between Locus of Control and students’ high school academic achievement, university academic achievement, university specialization , and  university year’s level.

6-There was a significant relationship (P< .03) between the Locus of Control and students’ high school specialization in the conventional setting only.  It indicated that students who had a science specialization were less external than who had a literature specialization.

These results came along discussion and recommendations for further studies in future.