Examining the Model of Relationship Between Professors' Support for Autonomy and Parental Psychological Control with Critical Thinking through Mediation of Academic Stress Among Female Students

The purpose of this research was to test the model of relationship between professors' autonomy support and parental psychological control with critical thinking through the mediation of academic stress of female students. The statistical population was all female students of psychology, educational sciences and counseling at University of Khuzestan province Payam Noor. The research sample subsumed 480 subjects who were selected voluntarily. The research design was correlational. to collect data Belmont, Skinner, Welborn, and Connell's (1988) Teachers' Autonomy Support; Barber's (1996) Parental Psychological Control; Sevari Academic Stress (2019) and Critical Thinking by Wang et al. (2019) questionnaires were implemented. After modifying the proposed model, the findings related to direct relationships showed a negative relationship between professors' support for autonomy and academic stress; positive relationship between parental psychological control and academic stress; There was a negative relationship between parental psychological control and critical thinking, and a significant positive relationship between professors' support for autonomy and critical thinking, but the relationship between academic stress and critical thinking was not significant. The results related to indirect hypotheses showed that the relationship between professors' support of students' autonomy and critical thinking through academic stress and the relationship between parental psychological control and critical thinking through academic stress was significant.