Investigating the Mediating Role of Mental Health Gains and Losses in the Relationship between Expectations and Academic Motivation

 Motivation is one of the most important elements of learning and progress. Although intelligence and talent are important and determining factors of students' learning, other factors are also important and influential besides these factors. Among these factors, motivational beliefs can be mentioned. Academic motivation generally refers to the motivations, needs, and factors that cause a person to attend educational environments and obtain an educational certificate. Motivation is defined as a process by which goal-oriented activities are stimulated and maintained. In the theoretical and conceptual models of motivation, progress, beliefs, and expectations of people, the most important and main determinants of progress behavior are considered. These models include attribution theory, expectation-value theory, self-determination theory, goal theory, and self-efficacy theory. When learners have the necessary motivation to learn, the process of communication is facilitated, content becomes more fluent, anxiety is reduced, and creativity and learning are manifested. Also, motivated students have positive motivational effects on the teacher and as a result, they make education satisfactory for both the teacher and the students. Also, the study showed that students' motivation affects all classroom activities. The issue of academic motivation is an essential issue for teachers and education custodians of different countries. Increasing the motivation level of students requires a change in the factors that motivate a person, which is divided into two categories, internal and external. Motivational beliefs, the expectation of success, and perceived subjective value act as mediating variables about cognitive processes and progress behaviors. At the most general level, it is assumed that the socio-cultural environment acts as the main source of influence on the mental processes of the individual. This environment includes stereotypes related to gender and culture, behaviors and beliefs of socializers, talents, and previous development of the individual. Considering that the researchers of expectancy-value theory have emphasized the different roles of task value, ability-expectation beliefs, task difficulty understanding, source of control, and previous progress in subsequent progress, it can be said that expectation-value can influence It has positive and negative effects on students' academic motivation, therefore, in this research, we seek to answer the following question. Do psychological and situational gains and losses in the relationship between expectations and values ​​affect academic motivation?

The current research is of the correlation type, which examines the relationships between the variables of the proposed model using the structural equation modeling method. The statistical population of this research includes all secondary school girls and boys of Qorve city in the academic year 2020-2021, and the number of these students is reported to be 10,000 by the Ministry of Education. The sample size in this research was calculated using Cochran's pheromone equal to 384 people. The sampling method in this research is multi-stage cluster sampling. The city has two regions, north and south, and girls' and boys' schools, and one class from each school and each level were selected through virtual and in-person selection (according to the conditions of the corona disease and the strictness of the schools) and a questionnaire was provided to them. The main tool for collecting information in this research is a standard questionnaire (psychological gains and losses, expectations, academic motivation). In order to determine the presence or absence of a relationship or influence between the variables and to estimate and generalize the results obtained from the sample size to the statistical population from the Kolmogorov-Smiranov test, the simple correlation model with the obvious variable, the Pearson correlation coefficient test and the path model (mediator) to evaluate the hypotheses and data The research and the research conceptual model have been used. The tool for analyzing questionnaire data of this research is Spss statistical software and Amos structural equation modeling software.

According to the findings of this research, expectations have a positive effect on academic motivation. Expectations have a positive effect on psychological gains and losses. Psychological gains and losses play a mediating role in the relationship between expectations and academic motivation.

In general, it can be said that by creating expectations in students, it is possible to help increase academic motivation. Also, according to the relationship between expectations and psychological losses, it can be concluded that by increasing expectations, psychological losses in students can be increased. In the model of expectation and value, these structures are the two main predictors of behavior leading to progress, and it is assumed that expectation and value have a direct effect on progress behavior, and the amount of expectation and value is influenced by the perception of the social environment, cultural context. Therefore, motivation and engagement are powerful processes that can motivate students to learn new skills on the one hand and can lead to a lack of engagement and educational self-destruction on the other hand. (Positive or negative reactions towards the teacher, classmates, university, or school; the feeling of belonging to the individual, conformity with the school or its demands). The review of the research literature shows that the educational involvement of parents is accompanied by the educational involvement of students, especially the concern to do homework at home and a positive attitude towards school. Students' involvement in school activities leads to educational progress, positive expectations about academic ability, improvement of academic performance, and reduction of dropping out. One of the limitations of this study is the inability to generalize to other cities in the country because the results of the study were only for students in Qorve. Also, the unnecessary strictness of the school administrators in distributing the questionnaire among the students can be mentioned, as well as the very poor cooperation of some students in answering the questions of the questionnaire, which we convinced them to cooperate with great difficulty and convincing explanations.