Causal Model of the Relationship between Perception of Social Environment and Academic Motivation by the Mediators of Academic Expectations, Attributional Styles and Academic Emotions

Perception of the social environment in which teachers and classmates play an important role in improving it has important effects on students' academic motivation. Therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate the causal model of perception of social environment with academic motivation by the mediating role of academic expectations, attributional styles and academic emotions.

This study had a descriptive correlational design. The study population consists of all junior high school students (grades 7, 8 and 9) of Tehran in the year 2020-2021, from which 295 students were selected to participate in the study by available sampling method through online calling. The instruments used included Teacher's affective Support (Sakiz, 2007), Student Emotional Support (Patrik, Ryan and Kaplan, 2007), Academic Motivation (Vallerand et al.,1992), Attributional Styles (Seligman et al., 1982), short form of the Achievement Emotions (Pekrun, Goetz and Perry, 2005), Expectation-Value (Hosseini, Taleh Pasand, Bigdeli, 2010); due to the prevalence of COVID-19, they were implemented virtually. Data were analysed by the path analysis.

The results showed that the proposed model best fitted the data. The components of perception of social environment had an indirect effect on academic motivation with the mediating role of academic expectations and academic emotions. The components of perception of social environment did not have an indirect effect on academic motivation with the mediating role of attributional styles. Attributional styles didn’t have any significant effect on academic motivation. Teacher affective support had a direct relationship with academic motivation (P <0.001). Academic emotions and academic expectations had a direct effect on academic motivation (P <0.001).

Based on the findings of this study, it can be concluded that teachers ' affective support and students' emotional support affect their academic motivation. Also, if the positive and negative academic emotions of students are taken into account and their expectation and value for learning is increased; students' academic motivation improves.