Teaching for Well-Being: The Mediating Roles of Social-Emotional Competence and Academic Buoyancy

Teaching practices have been identified as important predictors of perceived social-emotional competence and subsequent academic, emotional, and social outcomes in K-12 learners. However, the contribution of teaching practices to adaptive social-emotional outcomes is not as well understood in higher education contexts. Thus, the primary aim of this study was to explore the relationships between teaching quality, perceived social-emotional competence, academic buoyancy, and well-being in a university sample. The final analytic sample consisted of undergraduate and graduate students (N = 612) who completed the Teacher Behavior Checklist, Perceived Social Emotional Competence Scale, an academic buoyancy measure, and the Well-Being Profile Short-Form. Mediation analysis results showed that perceived social-emotional competence and academic buoyancy serially mediated the relationship between perceived teaching quality and student well-being, such that higher teaching quality was associated with greater perceived social-emotional competence, which in turn predicted higher academic buoyancy and well-being. These findings highlight the role of effective teaching in helping students develop social-emotional self-beliefs that enhance their ability to manage academic challenges and experience adaptive social-emotional outcomes.