academic well-being in students with physical-motor disabilities: examining the mediating role of school belonging, self-compassion, and academic self-efficacy

Background: paying attention to well-being in educational contexts is essential in evaluating educational systems’ health and dynamics. this research investigated the mediating role of academic self-efficacy in the correlation between school belonging and self-compassion in students with physical-motor disabilities.methods: this correlational study employed structural equation modeling as the analytical approach. the statistical population for this study comprised all 12-18-year-old students with physical-motor disabilities in ahvaz, iran in 2022. the convenience sampling method was employed to select 282 students with physical-motor disabilities as participants. to collect data, the academic well-being questionnaire (awq), sense of school belonging questionnaire, self-compassion questionnaire-long form (scs-lf), and students’ academic self-efficacy questionnaire (saseq) were used. the proposed model was evaluated using structural equation modeling in spss version 27 and amos version 24.results: the mean and standard deviation of academic well-being, school belonging, self-compassion, and academic self-efficacy were 120.79±23.62, 66.48±19.46, 75.45±20.33, and 98.46±42.53, respectively. the findings revealed significant correlations between academic well-being and all direct paths except school belonging (p=0.001). furthermore, the indirect paths of school belonging and self-compassion exhibited significant associations with academic well-being, mediated through the role of academic self-efficacy (p=0.001). moreover, the model fit criteria, including comparative fit index (cfi) and root mean square error of approximation (rmsea), were 0.98 and 0.04, respectively.conclusion: based on the results, the modified and final model of the study demonstrated a strong fit with the data. this model serves to identify practical factors contributing to the academic well-being of adolescents with physical-motor disabilities. holding educational workshops to enhance school belonging and self-compassion in these students can improve their academic self-efficacy and overall well-being.