Beyond structural relationships: an integrated PLS-SEM, MGA, and IPMA framework for revealing group differences and pedagogical priorities in psychosocial classroom environments in CFL classrooms

With increasing learner diversity in target-language environments, a unified analytical framework is needed to examine both psychosocial classroom relationships and learner heterogeneity across demographic groups, which have received limited attention in previous research. To address this gap, the study integrated Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM), Multi-Group Analysis (MGA), and Importance-Performance Map Analysis (IPMA) to examine the relationships of two psychosocial classroom environment dimensions, task orientation (TO) and student cohesiveness (SC), with foreign language self-confidence (FLS), foreign language enjoyment (FLE), and willingness to communicate (WTC), and to compare these relationships across learner demographic subgroups in Chinese as a Foreign Language (CFL) classrooms. Based on data collected from 210 CFL learners in China, the findings indicated that (1) TO and SC were significantly associated with FLS, FLE, and WTC; (2) measurement invariance was not established for TO across Chinese proficiency subgroups; no significant subgroup differences were found across gender, student status, or Chinese proficiency for the remaining constructs; and selected structural relationships differed significantly across native language and residential type subgroups; and (3) IPMA identified pedagogical priorities by jointly considering the importance and performance of TO and SC across the four quadrants. Overall, the contribution of this study is primarily contextual and analytical: it extends prior psychosocial classroom environment research to CFL classrooms in target-language environments and demonstrates the practical value of integrating PLS-SEM, MGA, and IPMA for examining learner heterogeneity and informing evidence-based pedagogical priorities.