School Culture, Basic Psychological Needs and Student's Academic Performance: Testing a Causal Model

The aim of current research was to investigate the relationship between school culture، basic psychological needs (autonomy، competence and relation) and academic performance in a form of causal model. For this research، 420 fourth grade male students in a high school in Urmia city were selected by using cluster sampling method. They answered to school culture and basic psychological needs questionnaires. Path analysis was used for data analysis. The findings revealed that tested model had sufficient fit and predicted 24% of changes of academic performance، 11% need for autonomy، 5% need for competence and 7% of variance of need for relation. Need for autonomy had positive and significant effect on academic performance. The effect of need for competence on academic performance was positive and significant. Also، need for relation had positive and significant effect on academic performance. The effect of school culture on need for autonomy، competence and relation was positive and significant. In general، research findings showed that both individual (e. g. basic psychological needs) and contextual variables (e. g. school culture) have important roles in prediction of students'' academic performance.