Metacognitive knowledge and openness to diversity and challenge among Turkish pre-service EFL teachers: The mediating role of creative self-efficacy

The psychology of second language (L2) teachers has captured a growing interest among educational researchers in the past decades. However, the interaction among teachers’ job-related metacognition, diversity acceptance, and self-efficacy beliefs has been left under-researched. To fill this lacuna, this study examined the levels of metacognitive knowledge, openness to diversity and challenge, and creative self-efficacy and their correlation using a survey with 606 pre-service EFL teachers in Turkey. It also set out to display if metacognitive knowledge is a significant predictor of openness to diversity and challenge when creative self-efficacy is a mediator of their relationship. The results indicated that the participants displayed moderate levels of metacognitive knowledge (X? = 3.91), openness to diversity and challenge (X? = 3.97), and creative self-efficacy (X? = 5.18). Moreover, the results of Pearson correlations indicated a positive moderate correlation among the constructs. Additionally, the results of path analysis regression indicated that metacognitive knowledge is a significant predictor of openness to diversity and challenge when creative self-efficacy mediated their relationship. The study concludes with some future research directions and implications for L2 education regarding the psychology of teaching and the promotion of diversity and creativity.