Associations Between Perceived Mathematics Teacher Autonomy Support Among High School Students And Academic Engagement In Math:the Mediating Roles Of Personal Best Goals In Mathematics And Mathematics Academic Self-efficacy

Academic engagement in math refers to the degree of involvement of students at the behavioral,emotional and cognitive levels when carrying out academic tasks in math.High school is an crucial period for students to devote themselves to their studies.Teachers can have an profound influence on students’ studies.When teachers provide an autonomous and supportive learning environment,students believe that teachers care about and support them,which can improve students’ enthusiasm and autonomy in learning,and thus improve students’ academic engagement.On the contrary,when students do not perceive the support of teachers,it may damage students’ confidence to continue learning,think that their ability is insufficient,and lead to the decline of learning autonomy,thus reducing the degree of academic engagement.Perceived mathematics teacher autonomy support may have an important effect on high school students’ academic engagement in math.The study aimed to explore the associations between mathematics teacher autonomy support and academic engagement in math and its internal mechanism,that was,the mediating roles of personal best goals in mathematics and mathematics academic self-efficacy.In this study,a total of 1025 high school students were tested twice,with a measurement interval of one month,and 821 effective subjects were finally obtained by excluding the situation of not answering carefully.The measuring tools included perceived mathematics teacher autonomy support scale,personal best goals in mathematics scale,mathematics academic self-efficacy scale and academic engagement in math scale.The results of mediation analysis showed that:(1)At T1 or T2,perceived mathematics teacher autonomy support could directly influence academic engagement in math,T1 perceived mathematics teacher autonomy support could positively predict T2 academic engagement in math.(2)At T1 or T2,personal best goals in mathematics played a mediating role between perceived mathematics teacher autonomy support and academic engagement in math.Perceived mathematics teacher autonomy support could indirectly influence academic engagement in math by influencing personal best goals in mathematics.(3)At T1 or T2,mathematics academic self-efficacy played a mediating role between perceived mathematics teacher autonomy support and academic engagement in math.Perceived mathematics teacher autonomy support could indirectly influence the academic engagement in math by affecting mathematics academic self-efficacy.(4)At T1 or T2,personal best goals in mathematics and mathematics academic self-efficacy could play a chain mediating role between perceived mathematics teacher autonomy support and academic engagement in math.Perceived mathematics teacher autonomy support could indirectly influence academic engagement in math by influencing students’ personal best goals in mathematics and mathematics academic self-efficacy.At the same time,T1 personal best goals in mathematics and T1 mathematics academic self-efficacy could play a chain mediating role between T1 perceived mathematics teacher autonomy support and T2 academic engagement in math.In this study,the associations between mathematics teacher autonomy support and academic engagement in math and its internal mechanism were deeply explored,which can better understand the factors affecting academic engagement in math,provide certain basis for schools and teachers to improve academic engagement in math,and have certain enlightenment for schools and teachers’ teaching.