Teacher-student relationships and hope among rural adolescents: a moderated mediation model

ABSTRACTConsiderable studies have examined the influence of family environment on adolescents’ hope, but few studies have discussed the influence of school environment on adolescents’ hope, and even fewer have investigated the mediating and moderating mechanisms between teacher-student relationships and hope among rural adolescents. To address these research gaps, this study combined Bernardo’s hope theory, the self-determination theory (SDT), and the protective-protective model to examine the influence of teacher-student relationships on hope, the mediating effect of school engagement, and the moderating effect of peer trust among rural adolescents. A sample of 1373 adolescents from four rural secondary schools in Fujian province completed questionnaires on teacher-student relationships, school engagement, peer trust, and hope. Correlation analysis showed that there were significant positive correlations between teacher-student relationships, school engagement, peer trust, and hope. Moderated mediation analysis showed that teacher-student relationships could directly predict hope and indirectly predict hope through the mediating effect of school engagement. Peer trust positively moderated the relationship between teacher-student relationships and school engagement, but not the relationship between teacher-student relationships and hope. This study highlights the mechanism of teacher-student relationships on hope from the perspective of the school environment and provides a reference for promoting rural adolescents’ hope.KEYWORDS: Rural adolescentsteacher-student relationshipsschool engagementpeer trusthope Disclosure statementNo potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).Author contributionsC.L and Y.E were responsible for the study design, collected the data, performed the analysis, and C. L, Z.H, H.H and Y.E wrote, reviewed, and revised the manuscript.Data availability statementThe datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.Ethics statementThe studies were reviewed and approved by the Ethics Committee of Longyan University (NO: LY202200L).Additional informationFundingThis work was supported by Fujian Provincial Social Science Planning Project in 2020 (Project number: FJ2020X008).Notes on contributorsChunli LuChunli Lu is a Ph.D. student at Xi 'an Jiaotong University and works at the School of Normal Education, Longyan University, China. Her research focuses on mental health education for adolescents.Zheping HuangZheping Huang is a senior researcher at Women and Infants Hospital & Brown Medical School, Rhode Island, USA. His research focuses on reproduction.Huaxiang HeHuaxiang He is a student at Fujian Medical University and works at the Fujian Medical University Union Hospital, Fujian, China. Her current research focuses on the mental health of patients.Yiting EYiting E is a Ph.D. student at Xi 'an Jiaotong University, Shaan xi, China. Her current research focuses on the mental health of children and adolescents.