Perceived teacher support, student engagement, and academic achievement: a meta-analysis

Abstract

Guided by the self-system process model, the aim of this study was to unravel the relationship between students’ perceived teacher support and academic achievement as well as to address the role of student engagement, using a meta-analytic approach. Based on 71 empirical articles, we found that there was a small to medium correlation between perceived teacher support and achievement (r = 0.16), moderated by grade level, dimensions of teacher support, and measures of academic achievement. Perceived teacher support had the greatest impact on achievement among upper-secondary students, while also had a larger influence on student course grades than standardised test scores. Meanwhile, perceived emotional support had a larger effect size than autonomy or academic support on student achievement. In terms of mediating analysis, both general student engagement and its sub-types (behavioural, cognitive, and emotional engagement) partially mediated the relation between perceived teacher support and student achievement.

Keywords:

• Teacher support
• student engagement
• academic achievement
• meta-analytic approach

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Dr. Xin Gu at the East China Normal University for his helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. We would like to thank Mr. Xin Zhang at the Chinese University of Hong Kong for his kind help in data analysis.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the [Grant 2019ECNU-XFZH015] from the East China Normal University.