Teacher Justice and Students' Engagement: The Parallel Mediation Analysis on the Role of Basic Psychological Needs Satisfaction

ABSTRACT Engagement is a promising path to enhance learners' educational success, and it is a vital index of the learners' process which is related to higher and better educational and social achievement. Teachers' behaviours within the class can influence the learners' engagement and among these behaviours, justice is dominant since practicing and studying justice have been appealing to practitioners and academic scholars. Because justice is one of the learners' basic prospects and preferences, investigating learners' perception of teacher justice is a priority. The just behaviour of teachers in performing procedures, distributing results and communicating with learners is one of the activities that improve teachers' educational efficiency and learners' education and emotions. Besides, Self‐Determination Theory (SDT) holds that when people's basic psychological needs (BPN S ) for relatedness, autonomy and competence are satisfied, engagement can be gained. Thus, the present research primarily investigates the way teacher justice influences students' engagement and scrutinises the mediator role of BPN S in this relationship. As a result, 280 Chinese learners in four universities participated and they completed the three questionnaires. The results revealed that there was a strong correlation between justice and engagement ( r = 0.519). Likewise, a parallel mediation model was created, and it was revealed that among the factors of BPN S , relatedness, autonomy and competence had the highest correlations with both justice and engagement respectively. Indeed, relatedness satisfaction played as a significant mediator in the relationship between teachers' classroom justice and student engagement. The study ends with practical implications for teachers and policymakers.