The primacy of care in teacher strategies for promoting student engagement: a mixed-methods study in Chinese institutions of higher education

In the field of higher education, the strong correlation between teacher strategies and student engagement has been widely acknowledged. However, existing research has not yet provided comprehensive and nuanced evidence to fully elucidate the dynamics and complexity of this relationship. To address this gap, this study employed a mixed-methods approach, combining interviews with 30 university teachers and students with a survey of 3,819 undergraduates across four higher education institutions. This study identifies six effective teacher strategies that promote student engagement, namely selecting relevant teaching materials; adopting nontraditional teaching models; designing distributed course assessments; delivering clear expositions of knowledge; promoting meaningful classroom interactions; and attending to students’ learning status and needs. This study reveals that excessive use of technology is the direct cause of the ineffectiveness of teacher strategies (except for attending to students’ learning), while teacher care is a latent factor for sustaining the effectiveness of teaching strategies. As a caring teacher strategy, attending to and responding to students’ learning status and needs not only has a great impact on students’ learning engagement but also enhances the effectiveness of other strategies. These findings underscore the critical importance of instructors actively monitoring students’ learning states and responding promptly and appropriately to their evolving needs within real-world teaching contexts. Moreover, this study not only provides new insights into the relationship between teacher strategies and student engagement but also offers more targeted recommendations for college educators to improve teaching quality in complex educational contexts.