AI Insight
This study examined how teaching environment relates to student psychological wellbeing through psychological safety, university belonging, and learning engagement using survey data from 815 participants. The research found a moderate total association (0.435) between teaching environment and psychological wellbeing, with a small but measurable indirect pathway (0.036) operating through the three intermediate variables in sequence. While the proposed theoretical ordering showed the best relative fit among competing models, the cross-sectional design prevents establishing definitive causal relationships.
Why it matters
The findings suggest that improving teaching environments may enhance student psychological wellbeing through multiple pathways, particularly by fostering psychological safety and sense of belonging. This has practical implications for universities seeking evidence-based strategies to support student mental health and engagement.
Understand the Science
ObjectiveTo examine the predictive association between the teaching environment and psychological wellbeing in survey data and to investigate the serial indirect association under a prespecified ordering involving psychological safety, university belonging, and learning engagement.MethodsA fixed random seed was used to split 815 complete survey questionnaire records into an EFA group (n = 408) and a CFA group (n = 407), on which principal axis factoring and confirmatory factor analysis were conducted, respectively. After the measurement structure was confirmed, recursive equations and bootstrap intervals were estimated using the full sample.ResultsThe background distributions were similar across the two groups. The EFA retained five factors, and the five-factor CFA model showed good fit, χ2(485) = 529.551, CFI = 0.994, and RMSEA = 0.015. The total association between the teaching environment and psychological wellbeing was 0.435, and the full serial indirect association was 0.036. Among six competing orders estimated under identical constraints, the theoretically specified order showed the best relative fit, although its absolute fit remained inadequate.ConclusionsThe five variables were interrelated yet distinguishable in the survey data. The proposed ordering may serve as a theoretical model for testing in future studies using authentic samples; the cross-sectional survey findings cannot establish a causal ordering.