The Role of Academic Motivation, Academic Emotions, and Moral Intelligence in Predicting Students' Academic Performance

One of the important goals of education is to create an environment for the holistic development of an individual. Therefore, the current research was conducted to predict students' academic performance based on academic motivation, academic emotions, and moral intelligence.

The present research was a descriptive-correlational study. The statistical population included all high school students in Tehran in the second semester of the academic year 2022-2023, and 2065 participants were selected as the sample group by multi-stage random sampling method, and finally data analysis was conducted on 1010 participants. Students responded to the Questionnaires on Moral Intelligence (Lennick and Kiel, 2005), Academic Motivation (Vallerand, 1992), Academic Emotions (Pekrun et al., 2005), and Academic Performance (Pham and Taylor, 1999). To analyze the research data, Pearson's correlation test and stepwise regression were used.

The results showed that the variables of academic motivation, academic emotions, and moral intelligence have a significant correlation with academic performance in students (p<0.01). The results of regression analysis also showed that moral intelligence, academic emotions, and academic motivation explained 18%, 33%, and 39% of the variance of students' academic performance, respectively. These variables were able to simultaneously explain 39% of the variance of students' academic performance.

Therefore, to improve the academic performance of students, it is possible to develop programs to improve moral intelligence and, accordingly, academic motivation and academic emotions. The implications of the obtained results were discussed in the article.