The Relationship between Parents-Adolescent Interaction and Students’ Academic Engagement: The Mediating Role of Self-Regulated Learning

This study aimed to assess the parents-adolescent interaction and students’ academic engagement relationship. This study also investigated self-regulated learning as a moderator in the relationship mentioned above.  This research had a correlational design. The statistical population of the study was comprised of all 10th graders in Bushehr in 2017-18 school year from among whom 603 students (329 girls and 274 boys) were selected via random multi-stage cluster sampling method. The research instruments included Parent-Adolescent Communication Scale (Barnes & Olson, 1982), Motivated Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (Pintrich & DeGroot, 1990), and Student Engagement Scale (Reeve & Tseng, 2011). Structural equation modeling was performed to analyze the data. The results showed that the model fitted the data. Parents-adolescent interaction was significantly associated with students’ academic engagement and self-regulated learning. Furthermore, there was a significant, positive relationship between self-regulated learning and academic engagement. Moreover, the results demonstrated that self-regulated learning played a mediating role in the link between parents-adolescent interaction and students’ academic engagement. Accordingly, it can be concluded that in order to increase students’ academic engagement, parents should pay attention to improvement of their relationships with their children and promotion of students’ self-regulated learning.