SELF-ACTUALIZATION IN AN EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY COURSE FOR COLLEGE FRESHMAN HONORS STUDENTS

Summary.-38 college freshman honors students (15 men, 23 women) were enrolled in an educational psychology course designed to promote selfactualization through self-awareness and exploration procedures. Pre- and postcourse administrations of the Personal Orientation Inventory showed statistically significant positive changes in self-actualization values. Shostrom's clinically judged Non-self-actualized and Self-actualized groups were used as normative samples. Pre-course scores of the students were comparable to scores of the former norms whereas students' scores after the course were comparable to the Self-actualized norms, mean changes being -L 2 points, range of .7 to 8.6. The present study was designed to confirm whether an educational psychology course with college freshman honors students could enhance their self-actualizing values and behaviors as measured by the Personal Orientation Inventory. Comparisons with Shostrom's (1968) Non-self-actualized and Self-actualized normative groups were made. Thirty-eight first-semester college freshman honors students, 15 male and 23 female, elected to enroll in a credit course which met 3 hr. per week for 8 wk. While the sex distribution was comparable to Shostrom's groups, the students were younger in age than both normative samples. The scale was administered to students on the first and last days of class. The course content was presented in lectures, discussions, group activities, readings, and daily logs, designed to help students explore their feelings, interests, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, ideas, values, problems, and goals. Utilizing a t test for independent groups, no statistically significant differences were noted on pre-course scores of the honors studenrs and Shostrom's Non-self-actualized group on any of the items (Table I)', so the statistics before the course were comparable to those of the Non-self-actualized norm group. Posr-course scores (Table 1 ) of the srudents were not significantly different from those of the Self-actualized group on 9 of the 12 scales. Hence, following treatment, the honors studenrs were comparable to Shostrom's Selfactualized group on 9 scales. Finally, statistically significant differences, utilizing a t test for correlated data are shown in Table 1 for 8 of the 12 scales for the honors students between pre- and post-course which is indicative of movement towacd self-actualization after the training on this paper-and-pencil measure. These data suggest that the educational psychology course produced some significant changes in self-actualization as measured by Shostrom's scale, so the students scored more like Shostrom's normative samples. The scores of the students before the course were like those noted for other groups of bright and high achieving smdents (McClain & Andrews, 1972; LeMay, 1969; Lib & Snyder, 1968). These results support the hypothesis that an educational psychology course for college freshman honors students can enhance their self-actualizing values and more importantly, can help them achieve values comparable to those of self-acrualizing people. However,