Cultural congruence and educational equity: how ethnic minority teachers promote minority students’ school adaptation and its underlying psychological mechanisms

Grounded in a culturally and psychologically informed perspective on educational equity, this study examines how teachers' cultural congruence is associated with ethnic minority university students' adaptation to campus life and explores the psychological processes underlying this relationship. Drawing on attachment theory, social comparison theory, and ethnic socialization theory, we developed a structural equation model in which students' sense of belonging was specified as the central psychological mediator, while teachers' and students' ethnic identities were examined as contextual moderators. Using survey data from 180 undergraduates enrolled in three ethnic and normal universities in western China, structural equation modeling indicated that perceived teacher cultural congruence was strongly and positively associated with students' school adaptation (total effect <i>β</i> = 0.66, <i>p</i> < 0.001). Further analyses showed that students' sense of belonging significantly mediated this association (indirect effect <i>β</i> = 0.42, 95% CI [0.32, 0.53]), suggesting that a substantial portion of the association between cultural congruence and school adaptation operates through students' emotional connection to the school environment. Moderation analyses revealed that teachers' ethnic identity strengthened the association between cultural congruence and students' sense of belonging (<i>β</i> = 0.19, <i>p</i> < 0.01), while students' ethnic identity amplified the association between belonging and school adaptation (<i>β</i> = 0.21, <i>p</i> < 0.05), indicating a context-dependent in-group cultural resonance effect. The overall model demonstrated good fit to the data (CFI = 0.958, TLI = 0.943, RMSEA = 0.041), and all latent constructs showed satisfactory reliability and validity. Taken together, the findings suggest that teachers' cultural congruence supports minority students' school adaptation primarily by fostering a sense of belonging within everyday teacher-student interactions. These results highlight that educational equity is not achieved solely through institutional arrangements, but is actively constructed through culturally attuned relationships and psychological connection in the classroom context.