Among the factors that enhance student development and achievement, teacher support is paramount (Quin et al., 2018). However, teacher support is not a widespread practice in contemporary Chinese society because the traditional Chinese teaching philosophy focuses on discipline rather than support (Cheng, 2004; Hue, 2007). As a result, teacher support and warmth are not emphasized by school administrators or policymakers at present (Cheng, 2004). Therefore, empirical research demonstrating the value of positive teacher–student interactions and emotional bonds in the Chinese context is both urgent and critical.

 

Perceived teacher support has been found to be associated with a range of positive developmental outcomes in students, such as greater academic achievement, student engagement, and positive peer relations (e.g., Klem & Connell, 2004; W. Liu et al., 2022). However, according to traditional Chinese teaching orientations, such as Confucian teaching, the priority of teaching is to discipline the student and instill moral beliefs instead (Hue, 2007). In the traditional Chinese culture and educational system, teachers set rules and enforce discipline, while support and warmth are downplayed (Hue, 2007). Despite this emphasis, a movement is emerging within modern Chinese culture that is starting to push back against these traditionalist views. For example, recent news reports in China expressed concerns and astonishment toward teachers’ lack of warmth to students and excessive use of physical and verbal abuse in schools ranging from kindergartens to universities (Ji, 2017). This new movement points to the need for Chinese school administrators and teachers to align their teaching orientations with the best practices in the international literature to improve Chinese students’ development as well as their well-being.

 

Researchers have utilized various theoretical frameworks to explain the positive relationship between teacher support and student academic achievement (Lei et al., 2017; Šakan et al., 2020). Theoretical perspectives such as Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological system theory and Darling and Steinberg’s (1993) integrative model of parenting highlight the interplay between factors in different domains of children’s lives. According to these theoretical models, the effect of school factors (e.g., teacher support) on child development may be conditional on familial characteristics (e.g., parental involvement).

 

Although there is consensus in the literature regarding the positive impact of teacher support on student development, emotional engagement, and academic achievement (Froiland & Worrell, 2016; Quin et al., 2018), much less is known regarding the mechanisms linking teacher support and positive developmental outcomes. Fredricks et al. (2004) used a combined measure of behavioral and emotional engagement and found that student engagement increases academic achievement; however, a combined measure makes it impossible to disentangle the effects of different type of school engagement. In addition, although the interplay between school and family factors has been receiving increased attention in education and child development research (Smith et al., 2020; Zhang et al., 2019), only a few empirical studies have examined these complex interactions. As a result, the causes of students’ attachment to school (e.g., LeCroy & Krysik, 2008) remain poorly understood, and comparatively few studies have explored the effect of teacher support on students in elementary school (Dubow et al., 1991) and middle school (Rueger et al., 2010).

 

This study addressed this gap by examining the mediating effect of attachment to school and the moderating effect of parental involvement on the relationship between teacher support and academic achievement. This multifactorial approach was aimed at revealing the complex mechanisms involved in the association between teacher support and academic achievement among Chinese students. By investigating the interactions between school and family, the two most important arenas for the socialization of children (Bronfenbrenner, 1979), this study offers a novel perspective that expands theoretical understanding as well as offering significant practical value.

Researchers have found positive effects of teacher support on student development in a variety of contexts (Lei et al., 2017; Quin et al., 2018). For example, Klem and Connell (2014) collected data from six elementary schools and found that teacher support was positively associated with higher student engagement and achievement, while Malecki and Demaray (2006) found that teacher support was more beneficial to low-performing (vs. high-performing) students. Teacher support creates a caring climate in which students feel safe to explore and engage (Furrer & Skinner, 2003), which subsequently enables them to develop their academic capacities in the classroom (Lei et al., 2017).

Attachment to school, as an emotional component of school engagement, has been demonstrated to predict a range of student behaviors in school settings, such as absenteeism and school bullying (W. Liu et al., 2022). For example, Quin et al. (2018) found that students who exhibit a strong attachment to school may be more motivated to learn. In contrast, low emotional attachment to school is detrimental to students’ development (see, e.g., Oldfield et al., 2016). Among the various factors involved, teacher behaviors have been found to be a salient predictor of students’ attachment to school (e.g., Hallinan, 2008). From an attachment theory perspective, a supportive teacher increases students’ emotional security (Furrer & Skinner, 2003). Students who perceive higher levels of social support are more likely to comply with teachers’ requests and have positive attitudes toward school and academics (Quin et al., 2018). It is thus reasonable to expect that students’ attachment to school will exert a positive effect on academic achievement in the Chinese context.

Parental involvement refers to parent–child interactions in relation to children’s learning processes, such as helping with homework. Castro et al.’s (2015) meta-analysis of 37 studies showed that parental involvement in children’s learning elevated students’ academic achievement in kindergarten, elementary school, and high school. From a social capital perspective, Ma et al. (2021) showed that the effect of the teacher–student relationship on student academic achievement in China was moderated by parental involvement. Yet, despite the evidence supporting the importance of parental involvement in student academic achievement, few studies have examined whether the effects of other predictors of academic achievement interact with parental involvement.

 

On the basis of the literature reviewed, we proposed the following hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: Teacher support will be positively associated with student academic achievement.

Hypothesis 2: Students’ attachment to school will mediate the effect of teacher support on academic achievement.

Hypothesis 3: Parental involvement will moderate the direct effect of teacher support on academic achievement.

Hypothesis 4: Parental involvement will moderate the effect of attachment to school on academic achievement.

Hypothesis 5: Parental involvement will moderate the indirect effect of teacher support on academic achievement.

For this study we utilized a convenience sampling strategy to recruit 1,240 participants from randomly selected classes at three middle schools in Nanjing, China, in November 2022. The research ethics committee of Southeast University approved this study, which is part of a large research project on teacher support in Chinese schools. We informed participants of the purpose of the study, the voluntary nature of their participation, and their right to withdraw. The online survey was administrated via Wenjuanxing in classrooms during school hours without the presence of teachers. Students had 45 minutes to complete the survey. After excluding invalid surveys displaying patterned responses, the number of final valid responses used for this study was 1,205 (effective rate of response = 97.17%). There were 580 boys (48.13%) and 625 girls (51.87%) in Grades 7–10. Table 1 presents the results of our descriptive analysis.

We measured teacher support using items derived from a scale developed by Mercer et al. (2011) and translated into Chinese by Wang and Holcombe (2010), which were found to have satisfactory validity and reliability. Students were asked to respond to three questions regarding their perceptions of teacher support: “How often can you depend on teachers to help you out when you have a personal or social problem at school?”, “How often do you talk to teachers about how things are going in your life?”, and “How often do your teachers really understand how you feel?” Items are rated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (always). Cronbach’s alpha in this study was .79.

 

We measured attachment to school with seven items that have been widely used in prior studies and found to have good validity and reliability when translated into Chinese (Kwok & Fang, 2022; Wang & Holcombe, 2010). Items are rated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). Sample items are “I feel like I belong to the school I go to now” and “I have to do well in school if I want to be a success in life.” Cronbach alpha’s in this study was .83.

 

Parental involvement was assessed with eight items derived from the Chinese version of a scale used in prior studies (e.g., Dumont et al., 2012; Xu et al., 2017). Sample items are “My parents often ask me if I need help with my homework” and “My parents listen to my ideas about homework.” Items are rated on a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (never) to 5 (always), with higher scores indicating higher levels of perceived parental involvement. Cronbach’s alpha in this study was .86.

 

Academic achievement was measured with an item asking the student to report their academic performance in the class, using a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (lowest 20%) to 5 (top 20%).

 

We controlled for the following demographic characteristics in this study: gender (0 = man, 1 = woman), grade (1 = 7th, 2 = 8th, 3 = 9th, 4 = 10th), rural residence (0 = urban, 1 = rural), and family income (1 = much lower than average, 2 = lower than average, 3 = average, 4 = higher than average, 5 = much higher than average). We also controlled for school differences with dummy variables. The fixed-effects approach was advantageous, as it removed school-level differences in the dependent variable (Phillips, 2006).

We used SPSS 21.0 to conduct our analyses and performed a conditional process analysis with Model 15 of the PROCESS macro to estimate the moderated mediation model. The largest variance inflation factor of the independent variables was 2.47, which shows that the model did not suffer from the problem of multicollinearity. Following Hayes’s (2017) suggestion, we set mean minus one standard deviation, mean, and mean plus one standard deviation to represent low, medium, and high levels of the moderator. We used the bootstrapping method to assess the moderated mediating effect in the PROCESS macro, since it has been shown to be more robust than traditional normal-theory tests (Preacher et al., 2007).

Table 1 presents the results of our descriptive analysis. The mean score for perceived teacher support was 9.09 (SD = 2.43). Participants had a mean score of 21.44 on the attachment to school scale (range = 7–35), while the mean score for parental involvement was 24.36 (SD = 4.63).

Table 2 shows the results from our conditional process analysis. In Model 1, teacher support exerted a positive direct effect on student’s attachment to school. Parental income was significantly related to attachment to school, while gender, grade, school, and rural residence were not.

 

Model 2 shows that teacher support, attachment to school, and parental involvement were positively associated with students’ academic performance. Parental involvement moderated the effect of teacher support as well as attachment to school on academic performance. In Model 2, parental income was the only demographic variable significantly associated with academic performance.

Table 3 presents the moderated mediating effects. The indirect effect was significant when students reported medium or higher levels of parental involvement. The coefficients of the indirect effect were smaller among participants who reported lower levels of parental involvement, suggesting the existence of a conditional indirect effect (Hayes, 2017).

This study examined the mediating effect of attachment to school and the moderating effect of parental involvement on the relationship between teacher support and academic achievement. In line with our first hypothesis and previous research findings, we found a significant positive effect of teacher support on students’ development. It is reasonable that teachers who offer more emotional and material support to students can encourage students’ intrinsic motivation. We further found that teacher support in Chinese middle schools was positively related to students’ attachment to school, which is in line with our second hypothesis and previous research findings (Hallinan, 2008). This finding is also in accordance with self-determination theory, which emphasizes the effect of social relations and interactions on people’s motivation to pursue competence (Deci & Ryan, 2000). Furthermore, it is consistent with prior studies in Western countries such as that of Fredricks et al. (2004), who found that attachment to school was positively related to academic achievement, and Quin et al. (2018), who found that students who were emotionally attached to school tended to comply with school rules and teachers’ expectations. In addition, these students may have higher learning motivation, academic aspirations, and enjoyment in school, all of which enhance their development.

 

Another key finding of this study is that teacher support and attachment to school exerted a stronger impact on academic achievement among students who experienced higher levels of parental involvement at home. A plausible explanation for this might be that parental involvement leads to a range of positive outcomes in children, such as intrinsic learning motivation, which amplify the positive effects of teacher support and attachment to school. This explanation is supported by theoretical perspectives such as Bronfenbrenner’s (1979) ecological system theory and Darling and Steinberg’s (1993) integrative model of parenting, which emphasize a holistic view in understanding child development. This finding is also consistent with prior studies that examined the interactive effects between family and school factors in China (e.g., W. Liu et al., 2021).

 

It is noteworthy that among the demographic variables included in our models, parental income was the only variable that had a strong impact on students’ attachment to school and academic achievement. This finding is consistent with prior studies (see, for a meta-analysis, J. Liu et al., 2020). In contrast, rural or urban residence was not related to attachment to school or academic achievement. One possible reason for this finding is that the effects of rural residence may be mediated by family income in the Chinese context.

This study answered the call for research that takes a holistic view of student academic achievement by examining factors in multiple socialization institutions (Smith et al., 2020). Our findings add further evidence to the complex mediating and moderating mechanisms among factors in different areas of children’s lives. This line of research warrants further investigation, particularly in China, where emotional bonds between the school/teacher and students have been neglected. Given that Chinese society is going through dramatic changes in terms of economic structures, future research in China may benefit from examining the role of family socioeconomic status as well as the mechanisms underlying the strong impact of family income on child development (J. Liu et al., 2020).

Our findings have important practical implications. We recommend that school administrators and teachers in China place a greater emphasis on providing a supportive environment rather than merely teaching in the classroom. For example, the training of teachers in China may incorporate more elements of teacher–student interaction, highlighting the importance of positive emotional bonds between teacher and students, instead of solely emphasizing discipline. A holistic view of child development is also needed to align best practice with the international literature, which has emphasized the interactive effects of factors in family and school domains (e.g., Smith et al., 2020). School administrators and teachers should aim to find ways to communicate and collaborate with parents to create a better social ecosystem that facilitates positive developmental outcomes in children, which could include launching pilot programs.

Our findings have the following limitations: First, this study used cross-sectional data, which can identify associations between the variables of interest but not causal relationships. Future researchers could conduct longitudinal research, which would enable scholars to assert causality. Second, the generalizability of our results is limited due to the use of a nonprobability sampling method. Collecting data from student populations in different cultural contexts would increase the generalizability of the findings. Third, we used only one dimension to measure constructs such as teacher–support and parental involvement; future researchers could include more dimensions such as parental home-based involvement and school-based involvement. Last, the use of self-reported surveys may produce biased results. In the future, scholars could measure academic performance with test results, which are more objective.

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