Teacher care and student engagement

Updated Sep 10, 2026

Yan Song, Qingyu Xu and Di Hu examine teacher care and student engagement in The primacy of care in teacher strategies for promoting student engagement: a mixed-methods study in Chinese institutions of higher education. Crossref records publication in Studies in Higher Education on 28 June 2026.

What the study reports

The study combines interviews with 30 university teachers and students with a survey of 3,819 undergraduates across four higher education institutions in China.

The authors identify six teaching strategies:

• Choosing material relevant to students’ learning.
• Using alternatives to conventional teaching approaches.
• Spreading assessments through a course.
• Explaining subject knowledge clearly.
• Creating worthwhile classroom exchanges.
• Noticing and responding to students’ learning needs.

They place care at the centre of their account and argue that excessive technology use can undermine teaching strategies. Those are the authors’ conclusions. These conclusions should not be treated as proof that care causes engagement to rise or that technology causes teaching to fail.

Questions for local feedback

Our suggestion is to ask students about clarity, interactions, assessment timing and responses to difficulties, then discuss specific examples with them. These are prompts for local investigation, not interventions this review has established as effective. The Chinese institutional setting also needs to remain visible when considering relevance to a UK course.