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The Nexus between emotional, metacognitive, and motivational facets of academic achievement among Iranian university students

Afsaneh Ghanizadeh (Department of English, Imam Reza International University, Mashhad, Iran)
Safoura Jahedizadeh (Imam Reza International University, Mashhad, Iran)

Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education

ISSN: 2050-7003

Article publication date: 9 October 2017

449

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to scrutinize university students’ affective experiences in academic contexts as well as the ways to integrate affection into existing models of motivation and learning. In particular, it probed 235 English as foreign language (EFL) students’ emotional exhaustion by investigating its role in their intrinsic motivation, effort regulation, and academic achievement. It also sought to examine the impact of intrinsic motivation on effort regulation and academic achievement as well as the effect of effort regulation on academic achievement among Iranian university students.

Design/methodology/approach

To do so, two distinctive questionnaires, namely; the “student version of Maslach Burnout Inventory” (Schaufeli et al., 2002) and the “Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire” (Pintrich and DeGroot, 1990) were administered to the participants. The data were analyzed via structural equation modeling (SEM).

Findings

The findings of the study yielded via SEM revealed that students’ emotional exhaustion negatively predicted students’ intrinsic motivation, effort regulation, and academic achievement. It was also found that intrinsic motivation significantly and positively predicted effort regulation and academic achievement. Finally, effort regulation was found to be a positive and significant predicator of university students’ academic achievement.

Originality/value

While a plethora of studies, thus far, strived to investigate the concept of burnout in different contexts, there is still a scant body of research attempting to delve into the most significant dimension of the syndrome (i.e. emotional exhaustion), and, to the best knowledge of the present researchers, no documented study to date has studied Iranian university EFL students’ emotional exhaustion, intrinsic motivation, and effort regulation within a single framework.

Keywords

Citation

Ghanizadeh, A. and Jahedizadeh, S. (2017), "The Nexus between emotional, metacognitive, and motivational facets of academic achievement among Iranian university students", Journal of Applied Research in Higher Education, Vol. 9 No. 4, pp. 598-615. https://doi.org/10.1108/JARHE-05-2017-0060

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited

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