Associations of Perceived Classical Chinese Text Reading Ability with Confucian Virtue Cognition and Practice Among Chinese Adolescents: The Indirect Role of Internalization Experience

Classical Chinese texts are important cultural materials through which adolescents encounter traditional moral values, yet the associations among perceived classical Chinese text reading ability, internalization experience, and Confucian virtue cognition and practice remain insufficiently examined. This study investigated whether junior secondary school students’ perceived classical Chinese text reading ability was associated with their moral cognition and moral practice of the Confucian five virtues: benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, and integrity. It further examined whether the variables showed a statistical indirect association through internalization experience in traditional cultural learning. Participants were 304 junior secondary school students from Ningbo, China who completed self-developed measures of perceived classical Chinese text reading ability, five-virtue moral cognition, five-virtue moral practice, and internalization experience. Correlation and hierarchical regression analyses showed that perceived reading ability was positively associated with both moral cognition and moral practice after controlling for gender and grade. Cross-sectional mediation analyses identified an indirect association through internalization experience between perceived reading ability and moral cognition, as well as between perceived reading ability and moral practice. However, given the cross-sectional design, these associations cannot establish temporal or causal ordering. These findings suggest that adolescents’ perceived competence in classical Chinese reading is positively associated with Confucian virtue cognition and practice, with internalization experience serving as a plausible intervening process—one that requires longitudinal or experimental evidence to confirm.