The Mediating Impact of Psychological Safety between Trust in Teachers, Teacher-Student Relationships, Learning Environment and Student Engagement in Vocational Medical College in Guangdong, China

Student engagement refers to the physical and psychological energy that learners dedicate to academic activities, which is widely recognized as a key determinant of academic achievement, retention, and overall educational outcomes. Engaged students are more capable of grasping complex concepts, retaining knowledge, and applying what they have learned in real-world contexts. This study investigates the influence of students’ trust in teachers, teacher–student relationships, and the learning environment on student engagement, with psychological safety as a mediating variable, in higher vocational medical colleges in Guangdong Province, China. Adopting a quantitative design and grounded in a positivist epistemology, data were collected through a Likert-scale questionnaire administered to 381 students randomly selected from six public higher vocational institutions. The data were analyzed using SPSS 27 and AMOS 23 to test ten hypotheses. The results reveal three major findings: (1) all three predictor variables significantly influenced both psychological safety and student engagement, with the learning environment showing the strongest predictive effect on psychological safety, while psychological safety itself emerged as the most robust predictor of engagement; (2) psychological safety partially mediated all tested relationships, with significant indirect effects observed; and (3) although environmental factors exerted the greatest overall influence, interpersonal dimensions also demonstrated significant direct effects, particularly with teacher–student relationships exhibiting a stronger direct impact on engagement than trust in teachers. These findings contribute to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms underlying student engagement in vocational medical education and highlight the importance of cultural and contextual factors that merit further exploration.