Relationship Between School Institutional Justice and Students’ Emotional Regulation Skills: Teacher Support and Peer Support as Relational Pathways

Emotional regulation skills are key predictors of individual long-term well-being. The current study explored how students’ perceptions of school institutional justice are associated with their emotional regulation skills, and examined whether perceived teacher support and peer support mediated this process. Data were collected from 62,723 students from across 50 primary, junior and senior middle schools in Xi’an, China. The construct validity of the measures was confirmed through confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) based on pre-test data from 405 students. To account for the clustered structure of the data, a two-level structural equation modeling approach was used. The results showed that school institutional justice was positively associated with students’ emotional regulation skills, and that this association was primarily indirect. Teacher support emerged as the primary pathway linking school institutional justice to students’ emotional regulation skills. Peer support contributed less as a mediating pathway, but played an additional role in a chain pathway from teacher support to peer support and then to students’ emotional regulation skills. The direct association between school institutional justice and students’ emotional regulation skills remained significant but was small. These findings highlight the positive roles of school institutional justice, teacher support, and peer support on enhancing students’ emotional regulation skills.