Teacher's authority: student's anxiety, depression, and achievement

Document of basic evolution of education, has described teacher as example of honest and knowledgeable. Authority is one of the Key features of teacher that divided into desirable and undesirable ones. Usually different kinds of authority are divided into two general categories: content-legal and formal- Existential as desirable and undesirable ones. This study examines the relationship between types of teacher authority and anxiety, depression and achievement. Two questionnaires were used to collecting data: the first one a researcher made questionnaire to examining teacher authority and second one a mental health questionnaire (with two subscales of anxiety and depression). All of the high-school girl students in 1393, in Bojnord were the population of this study. 378 students were selected as the sample size. The results showed that there is no significant relationship between formal- existential authority of teachers and achievements of students. But, there is significant positive relationship between this kind of authority and depression and anxiety of students. There is significant positive relationship between content-legal authority of teachers and students achievements, and there is significant negative relationship between this kind of authority and depression. The findings have high integrity and are in keeping with our expectations of different types of authority. formal- existential authority as undesirable one has direct relationship with anxiety and depression, and content-legal authority as desirable one has direct relationship with achievement and indirect with depression. Teachers through content-legal authority and their scientific and moral personality, in addition of respecting to students’ independence, can play a role as a desirable example (osve hasane). On the other hand, teachers through avoiding imposing formal- existential authority can lead educational process toward safe academic achievement, internal motivation and totally toward deeper educational flows.