AU - Delbari, Zohra AU - Amani, Melahat AU - Baradaran, Abulqasem TI - The Effect of Teachers' Teaching Quality during the Corona Epidemic on Students' Academic Performance: the Mediating Role of E-learning Readiness and Virtual Education Quality PT - JOURNAL ARTICLE TA - RJMS JN - RJMS VO - 29 VI - 11 IP - 11 4099 - http://rjms.iums.ac.ir/article-1-7646-en.html 4100 - http://rjms.iums.ac.ir/article-1-7646-en.pdf SO - RJMS 11 ABĀ  - Background & Aims: One of the most important social institutions is the institution of education. An institution whose importance has caused planners and policymakers to pay special attention to it in their decisions and consider it as the basis for the development of societies. Favorable academic performance increases self-confidence and improves quality, and on the other hand, unfavorable academic performance causes feelings of inadequacy and loss of self-confidence. With the onset of Corona and the emphasis on social distancing in this regard, face-to-face education in schools and universities was closed in many countries. In addition to online education, the preparation of e-learning also affects the academic performance of students. If the learners are not prepared for this learning, they will have problems entering such learning and their performance will be affected. One of the important factors in the preparation of e-learning and the prerequisite for the implementation of virtual education is access to technology. Technology in virtual education includes the internet, smartphone, and necessary software. Without the necessary and appropriate equipment, the implementation of e-learning will have problems. Another important factor in preparing for electronic learning is having the necessary and continuous skills in using educational software, so learners must have the necessary ability to interact and communicate with technology to learn educational topics. One of the other factors affecting the academic performance of students in the conditions of the corona outbreak is the quality of teachers' teaching. The new situation caused by the spread of Corona has imposed unprecedented conditions on the education system of the countries, while before that, teachers were present in their classrooms most of the time and using traditional methods In particular, they used the lecture method to teach, but now they have faced a new situation where they have to teach online and change their teaching methods according to the conditions. Examining the quality of teachers' teaching is one of the most important issues that provides appropriate feedback in making basic decisions and analyzing educational issues. The quality of teaching is defined as the degree of conformity and consistency of each of the main indicators and characteristics of teaching quality with the standards and desirable and superior characteristics that are mentioned in various theories. The importance of the present research should be stated, considering that the results of some research pointed out the negative effect and undesirable uses of social media on the performance of students, and on the other hand, researchers also pointed to the positive effect of social media on learning and improvement. The communication skills of students and the development of these capacities have been pointed out, this existing educational gap justifies the need for investigation in this case and it is necessary to investigate more about the effect of virtual education on academic performance. In the research conducted on e-learning in Iran, most of the research refers to the preparation for e-learning at the university level, and the quality and preparation of learning in e-learning at the secondary level are not mentioned. Therefore, in this research, the preparation for e-learning was investigated as a mediating variable on virtual education at the high school level, to determine whether the change in the statistical population still confirms the results of the previous research or not. On the other hand, the studies carried out after the spread of the Coronavirus have mostly focused on the positive and negative consequences of virtual education from the teachers' point of view, and less research has focused on the role of teachers' teaching quality in virtual space and its final effect on academic performance, to fill the void. Mentioned research, in this research, the role of teachers' teaching quality on academic performance was investigated with the mediating role of e-learning preparation and virtual education. Because the rate of academic progress and failure is one of the efficiency criteria of the educational system, therefore, the discovery and investigation of variables affecting academic performance lead to a better understanding and prediction of effective variables in the school. As a result, the findings of this research can be a good help for the quality of education in the virtual space, and also the findings of the research can be made available to managers and teachers to use to improve the quality of teachers' teaching and teach teachers about the effectiveness of teaching. Make them aware of the academic progress of students. Methods: The statistical population of the research was all female secondary school students of the second period of Sabzevar city in the academic year of 1399-1400. Using the cluster sampling method, 335 people were selected as samples from this statistical population. The research was descriptive and correlational. To collect information, questionnaires on teachers' professional quality, e-learning readiness, and virtual education were used. Modeling of structural equations was performed by smart pls software. Results: The results of correlation analysis showed that there was a significant relationship between the variables of teachers' teaching quality, learning readiness, and virtual education with the variable of academic performance. The results showed that the path coefficient of teachers' teaching quality to e-learning readiness was 0.41, e-learning readiness to virtual education quality was 0.70, and virtual education quality to academic performance was 0.71. The model had good validity and reliability and all the fit indices of the model were in the desired range. Conclusion: The results indicate that the quality of teachers' teaching had an indirect effect on the academic performance of students due to the effect on the preparation of electronic learning and the quality of virtual education. According to the results of the present research, planning should be done in a happy atmosphere in such a way that the academic performance of students increases. For this purpose, it is better to provide preparation courses for students to use virtual space and for teachers, necessary courses for optimal teaching in virtual space. All researches face limitations. One of the limitations of the current research is related to the generalization of the research findings, considering that the study was conducted on high school students; therefore, generalizing the results to other stages should be done with caution. Another limitation is related to the unisex nature of the statistical population of the research, and its generalization to the statistical population of boys is not confirmed. It is suggested that other research on the effect of teachers' teaching quality on academic performance be carried out by changing and replacing the variables present in elementary school. In other research, it is possible to examine the research model in both sex groups to check what changes the gender factor causes in the research results. It is also suggested that teachers inform students about the way of activity and how to evaluate themselves in virtual education and teach them how to use virtual space. CP - IRAN IN - Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Bojnord University, Bojnord, Iran LG - eng PB - RJMS PG - 89 PT - Research YR - 2023