Academic alienation among students: The role of parental psychological control and teacher goal emphasis

The aim of this research was to investigate relationships between parental psychological control (consist of dependency-oriented and achievement-oriented) and teacher goal emphasis (consist of mastery, performance-avoidance and performance-approach) with academic alienation and its dimentiones (consist of negative attitudes toward school, academic unimpotance and academic disliking). The research plan was correlation. The participants were 371 students selected by multistage random cluster sampling method from junior high schools in Shiraz. The instruments used in this study were Composite Academic Alienation Scale, Parental Psychological Control Scale, and Teacher’s Emphasis on Goal Structure. The results from inter regression analysis showed that achievement-oriented of the parental psychological control predicts negative attitudes toward school, positively. Also, teacher’s mastery goal emphases negatively and teacher’s performance-avoidance goal emphases positively predicted academic alienation and its component. Teacher’s performance-approach goal emphases predicted academic unimportanc, negatively. Totally, parental psychological control and teacher goal emphasis could explain 2.3 % and 19% of variances of students’ academic alienation, respectively. The step-wise regression analysis indicated mastery and performance-avoidance goals emphases are the strongest prediction for academic alienation, respectively.. The results of this research showed the importance of teacher’s mastery and performance-avoidance goals emphases in student's academic alienation. Teachers can have been a crucial role in the prevention of academic alienation with focus on student's mastery of concepts and avoid comparing them