Mediating Role of Student–Sport Teacher Relationship Quality in Relation between Emotional Self-Regulation and Assertiveness of Secondary High-School Students in Kerman City

Background and

Assertiveness ability improves psychological-social skills, academic achievement, and self-esteem. Emotional self-regulation causes identifying emotions in people and helps them to succeed in academic achievement and social interactions. Student-teacher relationship quality has a major in regulating emotions and improving academic achievement and social interactions. Thus. This study aimed to investigate the mediating role of student–sports teacher relationship quality in the relation between emotional self-regulation and assertiveness of secondary school students in Kerman city.

This descriptive-correlation study based on the structural equations model (SEM) was conducted among students (N=900) secondary school students in Kerman city during the 2020-2021 years. The participants were selected by two-stage cluster random sampling. A total of 270 students participated in this study. They were randomly selected from five all-girl schools and five all-boy schools, one class for each school. The participants completed the student-teacher relationship questionnaire (Murray and Zvoch, 2011), emotional self-regulation questionnaire (Hofmann and Kashdan, 2010), and assertiveness questionnaire (Gambril and Rigi, 1975). The SPSS-23 and AMOS-23 were used to analyze the data.

The results indicate that emotional self-regulation predicted directly %47 variances, indirectly %22, and a totally %69 variance of assertiveness. Student–sports teacher relationship quality directly predicted %43 of the variance of the assertiveness. Bootstrapping test confirmed the mediating role of student–sports teacher relationship quality in the relation between emotional self-regulation and the assertiveness of secondary school students in Kerman city. The results confirmed the proposed model by indexes of Chi-square=1.47, P-value=%071, RMSEA=0.042, RMR=0.088. The CFI, GFI, and NFI >%.90 were also appropriate. In sum, emotional self-regulation had positive effects on assertiveness by mediating the role of student–sports teacher relationship quality in secondary school students in Kerman city.

We suggest emotional self-regulation and student–sports teacher relationship quality will be considered to improve the students' assertiveness.