Investigating the mediating role of basic psychological needs in the relationship between the dimensions of family communication patterns and perception of the classroom environment with academic self-regulation in students

The education organization spends a significant amount of money annually on student education, and the drop in students, in addition to wasting the country's expenses, jeopardizes the resources of the next generation of manpower. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the mediating role of basic psychological needs satisfaction in the relationship between the dimensions of family communication patterns and perception of the classroom environment with academic self-regulation.

For this purpose, in this descriptive-analytical study, 225 female high school students were selected from Shiraz school students by cluster random sampling method. Participants completed basic psychological needs satisfaction questionnaire (Gagné, 2003), family communication patterns questionnaire (Koerner & Fitzpatrick, 2002), academic self-regulation questionnaire (Savari, Arabzadeh, 2012), and perception of the classroom environment questionnaire (Gentry, Gable and Rizza, 2002). The findings were analyzed using SPSS-20 and SMART-PLS-3 software using statistical method of structural equations and Pearson correlation coefficient.

The results showed that satisfying basic psychological needs, conversation orientation and perception of the classroom environment were significantly related to academic self-regulation (p < 0.05). Satisfying the basic psychological needs between conversation orientation and perception of the classroom environment played a mediating role in academic self-regulation.

Based on the findings of this study, it can be said that apart from influential family and educational factors, satisfying psychological needs as an intermediary variable has a role in improving academic performance and should be considered to improve academic self-regulation.