The Mediating Role of Academic Enjoyment in the Relationship Between Satisfaction of Psychological Needs and Students' Agentic engagement

The aim of this study was to investigate the mediating role of academic enjoyment in the relationship between satisfaction of psychological needs in relation to professors and students' agentic engagement. The present study is a basic research in terms of purpose with descriptive-correlational method. The study population included all students of Birjand University during the academic year 2021-2022. In total, 400 students were selected based on convenience sampling method to complete the Academic Emotions Questionnaire (AEQ) (Pekrun et al., 2005), the Basic Needs Satisfaction Scale in BNS-RS (LaGuardia et al., 2000) and the Agentic Engagement Scale (SAGE, Mameli and Passini, 2019). AMOS-22 and SPSS-24 softwares were used to analyze the data. The results showed significant positive relationships between the variables of academic enjoyment, satisfaction of psychological needs and agentic engagement (P<0.01). Satisfaction of psychological needs (Need for autonomy and Need for relatedness) has a direct and significant effect on student's academic enjoyment and agentic engagement (P<0.001) and academic enjoyment also has a positive and significant effect on students' agentic engagement (P<0.001). Satisfaction of psychological needs (relatedness) in relation to professors through academic enjoyment has an indirect and significant effect on agentic engagement (P<0.01). Therefore, the model has a good fit and it can be concluded that academic enjoyment has a mediating role in the relationship between the satisfaction of psychological needs in relation to professors and students' agentic engagement.