Achievement Goals and Academic Performance: The Mediating Role of Achievement and Self Regulated Emotions

The present study investigated the mediating role of anxiety and self-regulation in the relationship between achievement goals (mastery and performance) and academic performance. Participants (274 female and 384 male third grade Math students in state high schools of Tehran) were selected by multistage random sampling method and answered three scales: The Self-Regulation Strategies، Miller and et al (1996); the Achievement Goals، Middleton & Midgley، (1997); and the Academic Emotions، Pekrun (2005). To evaluate the academic performance، the students، average scores were used. Path analysis indicated a good fitness for the model and revealed that mastery goals have significant indirect effect on academic performance by the mediation of Self-regulation and anxiety، but performance goals don’t have significant indirect effect on academic performance. On the whole، it seems that mastery-oriented students use deep learning strategies and they usually have intrinsic goals and motivation. They naturally show less anxiety in challenging situations and they also use cognitive and Meta cognitive strategies which result in improvement of self-regulation and reduction of anxiety and have positive effects on academic performance.