Mohamed Ahmed Mohamud
Mohamed A. A. Khalaf
Abdirizak Warsame Abdulle
Ahmed Osman Barre- 1Faculty of Computer and Information Technology, Jamhuriya University of Science and Technology, Mogadishu, Somalia
- 2Center for Graduate Studies, Jamhuriya University of Science and Technology, Mogadishu, Somalia
Introduction: Engaging learners in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) class is a major challenge in resource-limited environments like Somalia. This study, being the first conducted in Somalia, is set out to examine the impact of teacher support (TS) on student engagement (SE) and academic resilience (AR), the mediation role of AR between TS and SE, and the moderation effect of gender and study year.
Methods: Data were collected from 559 EFL learners attending the Faculty of Computer & IT at Jamhuriya University of Science and Technology using a self-reported, cross-sectional online survey. TS, AR, and SE were measured using Students’ Perceived EFL Teacher Support Scale (SPEFLTSS), Student Engagement in Schools Questionnaire (SESQ), and Language Learner’s Resilience Scale (LLRS), respectively. Data was analyzed using SmartPLS 4.1.0.6, utilizing partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).
Results: The findings suggested that TS had a strong positive impact on SE and AR, while AR also acted as a strong predictor of SE. Mediation analysis showed that AR partially mediated the relationship between TS and SE, while moderation analysis revealed that the impact of TS on SE was stronger in the 2023 cohort in comparison with the 2024 cohort, and that TS had a bigger effect on AR in male students than in their female counterparts. The suggested model explained almost half (47.3%) of the overall variance in student engagement, indicating a robust predictive power.
Discussion: These findings underline the two-fold role of TS in sustaining SE and nurturing AR, while also emphasizing that this influence is formed by learners’ demographics and background. These results have implications for EFL teachers and policymakers to develop professional development programs, integrate resilience-building activities into the curriculum and foster conducive and responsive EFL environments in the Somali higher education landscape.
1 Introduction
Learner participation in academic activities is recognized as a critical determinant of academic success in many educational environments, especially in foreign language learning settings such as EFL, where students encounter a series of challenges, such as insufficient or missing course materials (Crosthwaite et al., 2015). In countries like Somalia, these challenges are intensified by broader socioeconomic and political constraints, which further delay the progress of language development.
Teacher support has therefore become a core construct that significantly influences student achievement in EFL learning. Studies from various foreign language learning settings show robust evidence that teacher support is highly correlated with student achievement and influenced by teacher mentoring and dedication (Ahmed et al., 2018; Cam Tran et al., 2025; Gao et al., 2024). Also, teacher behaviors such as emotional support, feedback, and physical presence are related to positive learning outcomes, whether in face-to-face or online learning (Wang et al., 2022). In resource-constrained settings like Somalia, students often struggle with inadequate resources, and the need for teachers to offer both academic and emotional support becomes of paramount importance.
Student engagement encompasses than simple participation. It covers cognitive, emotional, and behavioral capacity in using English, pursuing independent studies, and collaborating with peers (Dincer et al., 2019). The fundamental components of teacher support include emotional warmth, self-sufficiency, support, encouragement, and clear expectations. Such environments not only boost engagement but also nurture academic resilience, which is the potential to manage adversities, stay motivated, and overcome challenges (Duan et al., 2024).
Academic resilience has emerged as a crucial bridging factor between teacher support and student engagement. When students view teachers as responsive, compassionate, and approachable, they are able to gain resilience. Such endurance, by extension, fosters more persistence and encouragement towards learning activities (Hammad AlRashidi and Çakmak, 2024). This is particularly relevant when it comes to EFL contexts, where students are likely to face confidence issues, performance anxiety, and language barriers. Studies conducted in Nepal, Italy, and China assert that resilience mediates the nexus between teacher support, student engagement, and language competence (Romano et al., 2021; Shahi and Khadka, 2025; Wang et al., 2022).
Apart from the teacher-student interactions, the most effective strategies are usually connected to cultural awareness among teachers, personalized guidance, and adaptive teaching techniques, particularly for vulnerable and different student clusters. Emotional support has also been found to control the nexus between engagement and resilience, aiding the establishment of compassionate teacher-student relationships in challenging settings (Azmi, 2017; Rahimi and Yadollahi, 2011).
Despite the extensive evidence worldwide, a major divide and lack of empirical studies in resource-constrained contexts like the Somali EFL classes is evident. Teachers and students alike face a daunting challenge in Somalia: overpopulated classes, a lack of instructional resources, and emotionally distressed students. These circumstances underscore the importance of investigating the interplay of teacher support, engagement, and resilience and their implication on EFL academic performance indicators within the Somali context. Furthermore, the work of Guo et al. (2025), as far as we are aware, is the only scholarly work that has explored the bridging effect of academic resilience connecting teacher support and student engagement, and no prior research has addressed this relationship in the low-resource and post-conflict context of Somalia. In addition, the buffering effect of demographic factors like gender and the learner’s study year has not been previously explored, particularly in low-resource environments.
Thus, the rationale of this study is to attend to this gap by inquiring into the connection between teacher support, academic resilience, and student engagement among Somali EFL learners, specifically in the Faculty of Computer and IT, Jamhuriya University of Science and Technology, Mogadishu, Somalia. The study further examines the influence of gender and year of study as moderating variables and defines their impact on these relationships. It is expected that the findings will offer recommendations to EFL educators, higher institutions of learning, and policymakers to develop effective strategies and a supportive environment to build resilience and encourage active participation among EFL students.
2 Literature review and hypothesis development
2.1 Theoretical framework
This study relies on two interrelated theories: the Self-Determination Theory (SDT) and the Social Support Theory (SST). The two frameworks indicate that teacher support can help students engage more in school, and academic resilience helps mediate these two constructs.
Self-Determination Theory (SDT) by Ryan and Deci (2000) represents one of the theoretical frameworks employed to determine intricate relationships between the environment, individual motivation, and behavioral patterns, and which can be applied in an array of situations, including educational contexts (Azila-Gbettor and Abiemo, 2021). It emphasizes that when three cognitive needs are met: autonomy, relatedness, and competence, students experience elevated levels of motivated and active engagement (Guo et al., 2025). The greater the needs are fulfilled, the greater the autonomous motivation of the students and thus a greater resilience and learning engagement despite the difficulties faced when learning a foreign language.
SDT offers a motivational perspective through which teacher support is considered an important driver of students’ psychological growth in language learning. In EFL classrooms, a teacher who encourages independent learning, helps develop competence via constructive feedback, and shows authentic care addresses learners’ need for autonomy, competence, and relatedness (Shao et al., 2025). Satisfying these basic needs fosters intrinsic motivation, confidence, and belonging, which are fundamental psychological conditions for developing academic resilience and fully engaging in classroom activities. This pathway is supported by recent empirical studies; for example, Wang (2024) and Wang et al. (2025) found that EFL students whose teachers fostered autonomy and a positive emotional environment were more engaged and willing to communicate. Similarly, Wu et al. (2024) found that EFL students who received socio-emotional and instructional support from their teachers remained more engaged, even when they were under pressure. In under-resourced contexts such as Somalia, teacher support becomes a primary motivational catalyst that can transform external encouragement into internal drive, enabling resilience and engagement among EFL learners.
Alternatively, Social Support Theory (SST) by Cohen and Wills (1985) supports this perspective, asserting that emotional, instrumental, and instructional support derived from social relationships, including teachers, family, and friends, to learners facilitates them to cope with stress and enhance their psychological wellbeing, motivation, resilience, and engagement (Wu and Cai, 2025). In the case of EFL, learners usually face linguistic challenges, and the presence of teacher support helps minimize anxiety and stress (Zhou and Wu, 2024).
From the lenses of SST, teacher support is a vital social and environmental resource that mitigates stress and enhances positive learning outcomes. Emotional, instrumental, and instructional support from teachers helps students cope with academic stress, decrease burnout, and maintain perseverance. High levels of teacher support can predict a high engagement profile among EFL learners (Wu et al., 2024), while the availability of social and metacognitive scaffolding enables students to regulate stress and sustain engagement (Wang et al., 2025). These findings show that teacher support serves two purposes, namely: a mechanism for protection from emotional exhaustion and a resource for resilience and engagement. In resource-constrained Somali universities, where alternative support systems are often limited, teachers’ support and guidance serve as the primary social platform upon which students build resilience and sustained engagement.
Prior research across different contexts and cultures substantiates this rationale. Scholarly evidence indicates that emotional support from teachers represents a critical antecedent of both resilience and engagement (Shao et al., 2025; Guo et al., 2025). In L2 and EFL contexts, resilience has been identified as a crucial psychological asset that links supportive teaching to active classroom engagement (Zhang and Hu, 2025a).
The current study employs the above two theories and proposes that Teacher Support (TS), being the independent variable in the conceptual framework, directly influences Student Engagement (SE)-the dependent variable in the framework. TS also has a direct and positive impact on Academic Resilience (AR), while AR has a direct positive relationship with SE. The study also suggests that AR mediates the interplay between TS and SE. Furthermore, this study employs the conceptual model, depicted in Figure 1, to establish a deeper insight into how TS and AR collectively influence learning engagement among EFL students in the Faculty of Computer and IT of Jamhuriya University of Science and Technology, Mogadishu, Somalia.
Figure 1. Conceptual framework.
2.2 Teacher support and EFL student engagement
Scholars have increasingly recognized the critical implications of contextual and socio-cultural factors on students’ language learning process (Liu and Li, 2023). Empirical studies have consistently validated that social support facilitates the development of an individual’s language learning abilities and mitigates potential negative outcomes. Within the multiple dimensions of support, teacher support results from a particularly substantial influence in nurturing academic growth (Kelly and Malecki, 2022; Rueger et al., 2016).
Teacher support (TS) refers to the extent of help, direction, and encouragement students receive from their teachers, enabling students to appropriately cope with studies, assignments, and other learning exercises (Ahmed et al., 2018), and has been cited as an essential determinant in assisting students to cope with learning problems, leading to students engaging meaningfully in academic pursuits (Huang and Wang, 2023). It encompasses a set of methods and practices employed by instructors to assist students in their learning process (Gao et al., 2024). These approaches involve emotional support, academic assistance, and provision of essential learning materials.
Language learning is a highly demanding socialization process characterized by interactions with a variety of social actors, and EFL learners may face unpredictable challenges and language barriers in a non-native context (Hammad AlRashidi and Çakmak, 2024). In that regard, teacher support becomes a key source of support for EFL learners, as it gives students an impression of safety and courage to connect with their peers, control their emotions, and utilize coping strategies when faced with difficulties (Liu and Li, 2023; Liu et al., 2023; Marcus and Sanders-Reio, 2001). While these studies primarily stem from developed Asian contexts where more instructional supports are available, the same teacher behaviors may assume greater significance in under-resourced contexts, such as Somalia, as emotional and instrumental support can serve to mitigate system-wide deficiencies in learning materials and mentoring opportunities.
Previously, researchers (Brewster and Bowen, 2004) considered teacher support as a unidimensional construct, for instance, as emotional support, defining it as the teacher’s role in offering support, trust, and care to students. Others including (Kerres Malecki and Kilpatrick Demary, 2002; Malecki and Demaray, 2003; Shen and Chong, 2023) regarded it as a multi-faceted construct comprising of emotional (Affuso et al., 2023; Sadoughi and Hejazi, 2022), appraisal, academic (Shen and Guo, 2022), and instrumental support (Sadoughi and Hejazi, 2022) given to students. The differences in these conceptualizations also demonstrate cultural and contextual interpretations of “support,” which indicates that what counts as adequate teacher support may vary across cultures.
According to Derakhshan and Fathi (2024) and Liu and Li (2023) Emotional support includes teachers’ trust, care, compassion, and bond with their students, whereas academic support implies that instructors transfer knowledge to learners and give instructions pertaining to their learning techniques and practices, and instrumental support involves offering learning materials and resources to EFL learners (Yüksel et al., 2025). All those facets are interconnected and reinforce each other in the EFL context, and effective EFL teachers utilize a combined set of strategies to cultivate a conducive learning environment (Derakhshan et al., 2025).
Student engagement (SE), a central construct in language context, is defined as the effort and time a student devotes to partaking in course-related activities and exercises (Kuh, 2009). Furthermore, Skinner and Pitzer (2012) described engagement as a dynamic immersion in the learning process, while Bakker (2011) indicated that it is a cognitive state that leads to dedication and working with strong enthusiasm towards acquiring the necessary skills. Hiver et al. (2024) and Zhang and Hu (2025b) emphasized that student engagement serves as a cornerstone in educational practices and especially in the language learning context, as it improves the overall productivity of pedagogy and learning outcomes.
Student engagement is a complex variable embracing behavioral, affective, and cognitive effort in the learning landscape (Reeve, 2013; Skinner et al., 2009; Zhang, 2021). Behavioral engagement entails students’ deliberate involvement in class activities and paying individual efforts and attention to the teacher (Skinner et al., 2009; Zhang and Hu, 2025b). Affective engagement relates to the feelings of interest, enjoyment, enthusiasm, and belonging the student shows in the classroom context, and the positive connection between the students, peers, and the teacher, which contribute to the learning outcomes (Elliot et al., 1999; Xu et al., 2023). Cognitive engagement encompasses the application of higher-order thinking and the effort the learner pays toward mastering the content and constructing and processing knowledge (Senko and Miles, 2008; Xu et al., 2024).
Teacher support constitutes a critical function in forming a conducive educational setting that cultivates students’ engagement in the course of learning (Huang and Wang, 2023). TS, the main social support students receive, improves the positive interaction between the student and the teacher, whereas students show less respect to teachers who deal with them harshly or point fingers at them in public (Hammad AlRashidi and Çakmak, 2024).
Empirical studies consistently demonstrate that TS positively influences SE among EFL students. For example, Sadoughi and Hejazi (2022) and Schweder and Raufelder (2019) concluded that EFL teacher support operates as a critical part in shaping students’ learning and success, while Gao et al. (2024) and Luan et al. (2023) established that teacher support constitutes a substantial part in learners’ engagement with EFL courses. Assisting students amplifies their engagement, strengthening their persistence, belonging, and effort (Granziera et al., 2022). Similarly, Ahmed et al. (2018) and Klem and Connell (2004) further revealed a strong, favorable association between teacher support and student engagement. Nonetheless, research has also shown that the strength of the relationship may vary depending on context and learner characteristics. For example, Liu et al. (2023) found that perceived teacher support and its effect on engagement varied depending on classroom climate and academic level, while Hanaysha et al. (2023) found that institutional factors and learning environment shape how effectively teacher support translates into engagement. This suggests that both contextual and individual factors may act as moderators of the TS–SE connection, which warrants investigation in resource-constrained EFL settings such as Somalia.
As suggested by Liu and Li (2023), levels of engagement are dependent on a student’s year of study. Junior and senior students request help from their teachers, but their engagement is different. It had been indicated that senior students require greater autonomy, more help, or support from their instructors than junior students. This indicates that academic transitions are differently stressful and require distinct approaches and engagement strategies, and EFL (English as Foreign Language) teachers have to adapt to student needs change (Hanaysha et al., 2023).
In a nutshell, teacher support is a key source of EFL student engagement to satisfy the intellectual and emotional needs of students. This support creates an interactive and engaging learning environment, especially in resource-limited contexts like Somalia. Nevertheless, previous literature reveals variation in how strongly teacher support predicts engagement across cultures and educational levels, with limited evidence from African or post-conflict EFL contexts. There exists an empirical void on the nexus between TS and SE in the Somali EFL context; in line with this, this study puts forward the following hypothesis.
H1a: Teacher Support (TS) exerts a substantial, favorable impact on Student Engagement (SE) in the EFL context.
H1b: Study year moderates the relationship between TS and SE in the EFL context.
2.3 Teacher support and academic resilience
Academic Resilience (AR) has recently gained considerable scholarly interest in the field of education (Alahmari and Alrabai, 2024). It represents a psychological condition that allows one to handle stress, adversity, and hardships (Beltman et al., 2011; Hobfoll et al., 2003), and remain focused and motivated when facing anxiety and pressure during studies (Alva, 1991), to achieve positive learning outcomes and succeed academically (Kalaivani, 2021).
Researchers have emphasized the importance of resilience for students who may be academically at-risk, to cope with stress, and to thrive (Ahmed et al., 2018). This is particularly relevant in a context where university students are required to manage a range of responsibilities, such as assignments, projects, and reports (Vaez and Laflamme, 2008). The topic of EFL & L2 resilience is novel in research and has gained notable interest from scholars who view it as highly relevant in the realm of second language education (Kim et al., 2019; Liu and Han, 2022). EFL & L2 resilience may be described as a new form of academic resilience, which addresses burdens and difficulties that are often encountered during language learning processes and a learner’s disposition for dealing with challenges and getting positive language learning results, regardless of the burdens experienced in the process (Alahmari and Alrabai, 2024; Chu et al., 2024).
Some established, language-specific resilience scales include the Five-factor L2 resilience model by Kim and Kim (2017). The Five-factor model includes: perceived happiness, empathy, sociability, persistence, and self-regulation. Perceived happiness corresponds to a measure of satisfaction and positive human perceptions around EFL learners and their lives. Empathy relates to the potential capacity for learners to take on the emotion or make emotional connections with their peers. Sociability relates to the relationships the learner can create with others, especially with friends. Persistence resonates with the character of EFL learners of being hopeful and resolving problems, despite complications. Self-regulation relates to one’s potential to manage and control thoughts, feelings, and emotions.
The Five-Factor L2 resilience scale has been particularly used in EFL studies with strong validity and reliability in diverse cultural and learning contexts (Ritonga et al., 2023). The scale was also used by various researchers (Liu and Han, 2022; Wei et al., 2023; Wicaksono et al., 2023) to assess the endurance of Chinese EFL learners in high school and Ethiopian EFL learners in university education.
Empirically, teacher support functions as a critical determinant in nurturing the academic resilience of students not only in general education but also in EFL contexts. A study by Romano et al. (2021) found there was a positive connection between perceived teacher support and student academic resilience in high school students, indicating that positive teacher support enhances resilience and commitment to learning among students. Other studies by Alrabai and Algazzaz (2024) and Liu and Li (2023) discovered that teacher support (emotional, instructional, and instrumental) had a direct relationship to heightened resilience and readiness to immerse and participate in language learning.
A recent investigation carried out by Guo et al. (2025) in the Chinese EFL context, showed that teacher emotional support is a significant contributor to a learner’s readiness for challenges and thus, their academic resilience. However, cross-cultural evidence suggests that the magnitude of this association varies according to the educational system and cultural norms of teacher-student interaction. For example, in collectivist contexts, like China or Saudi Arabia, where teacher authority is highly respected, teacher support is often seen as a form of guidance. While in Somalia’s informal and under-resourced classrooms, it might be seen as a form of emotional scaffolding that helps students persist in learning despite structural barriers.
In addition, Wang et al. (2024a) assessed the aspect of teacher autonomy support and discovered a positive correlation with student resilience through the realization of core psychological needs, which then leads to sustained engagement to achieve EFL proficiency and acquisition.
Romano et al. (2021) reported gender disparity in perceived teacher emotional support and resilience among secondary-level students, indicating that male students expressed that they experienced stronger support from teachers, which in turn linked to increased academic resilience for male students. Additionally, other studies (Alahmari and Alrabai, 2024; Wang et al., 2024b) suggested mixed gender moderation effects, warranting further investigation. Although research investigating the teacher support’s isolated impact on language learners’ resilience is still limited, the above findings give initial insight into such a relationship and stress the value of supportive teacher strategies in the EFL learning context. Few studies have explored this connection in post-conflict and low-resource contexts like Somalia, where teacher support may function not only academic but also as an emotional stabilizer. It is important to address this gap to better understand how teacher behaviors contribute to resilience in adverse learning contexts; hence, the following hypothesis is formed:
H2a: Teacher support (TS) significantly and positively influences students’ academic resilience (AR) in the EFL context.
H2b: Gender moderates the interrelation between TS and AR in the EFL context.
2.4 Academic resilience and student engagement
The link between academic resilience (AR) and student engagement is a significant research domain, but limited research has addressed this association in the educational landscape, especially in the language context (Alahmari and Alrabai, 2024). Both resilience and engagement play a key role in persevering with challenging tasks, taking control of educational experience, and looking for opportunities to master content (Dincer et al., 2019; Dörnyei, 2019; Kim and Kim, 2017). Together, these findings emphasize that resilience strengthens learners’ willingness to engage academically despite challenging learning circumstances.
In their research, Ahmed et al. (2018) noted a positive correlation between academic resilience and student engagement, revealing that language learners with higher resilience tend to show amplified engagement in the language learning process. Furthermore, in another study involving Afghan EFL students, Ritonga et al. (2023) positioned academic resilience as an essential variable that enhances students’ engagement in virtual language learning, indicating that resilient students pursue their goals more effectively in times of high pressure.
On the other hand, Kim and Kim (2021) proposed that resilience contributes positively to learner engagement in language learning, which is connected to EFL learner outcomes and well-being (Hiver et al., 2024). In a similar regard, an empirical investigation by Liu et al. (2022) involving academic resilience, mindfulness, and engagement in the Chinese EFL learning context revealed that high academic resilience positively correlated with high engagement, reinforcing the implications for resilience and EFL learner engagement.
A study undertaken by Wicaksono et al. (2023) asserted that resilient and motivated learners are more inclined to immerse productively in virtual English self-assessment contexts, which again shows that self-regulated resilience contributes to engagement in online learning and helps to alleviate anxiety. In addition to that, Wang et al. (2024a,c) enquired into the linkage between resilience, engagement, and burnout in Chinese EFL learners, provided additional evidence for these constructs, and suggested their ramifications for EFL learners’ outcomes and welfare. Despite these converging findings, previous studies have revealed variations in the magnitude of that relationship, suggesting that the role of resilience on engagement may depend on access to resources, classroom expectations, or teacher behaviors; all of which are often quite different between contexts.
Previous studies collectively demonstrate this interrelationship of academic resilience and student engagement. Yet, little is known about how this relationship would unfold in a post-conflict, resource-constrained context, such as Somalia, where academic pressures might be exacerbated due to limited institutional support, economic constraints, and language barriers. Accordingly, taking AR as a predictor of SE in this context will be a significant contextual contribution to the literature. Therefore, the current study proposes the following hypothesis:
H3: Academic resilience (AR) significantly and positively influences Student engagement (SE) in the EFL context.
2.5 Teacher support, academic resilience, and EFL student engagement
The mediation approach, which places academic resilience between teacher support and student engagement further enhances both a theoretical and practical understanding of motivational processes in EFL/L2 learners. The mediation approach accounts for the fact that teacher support impacts engagement, but that the effect is partly explained by learners’ resilience. The mediation approach highlights the important role of internal coping and adaptive mechanisms in translating teacher support into student engagement.
This resilience, in turn, improves students’ cognitive, emotional and behavioral engagement in the learning activities. For instance, findings from research conducted by Ahmed et al. (2018) examining how teacher support is linked with academic resilience and student engagement suggested that teacher support can facilitate the learner’s academic resilience, which subsequently relates to higher student engagement.
According to Guo et al. (2025), empirical evidence suggests that teacher support indirectly influences engagement by helping college students improve their academic resilience. Similarly, Alahmari and Alrabai (2024) found that emotional and instrumental teacher support greatly impacts the academic resilience of students, which then leads to engagement, suggesting that academic resilience explains the association between teacher support and student engagement constructs. These overlapping findings reinforce the notion that teacher support does not operate in isolation; instead, it enhances internal capacities that sustain engagement even in challenging learning environments.
Similar findings were reported in an enquiry involving Chinese secondary students, indicating that teacher support was explicitly linked to student engagement through resilience (Shao et al., 2025). The findings from general, higher education, and EFL-specific studies collectively substantiate that academic resilience explains the pathway from teacher support to student engagement. Although this mediation mechanism has been studied in various international contexts, empirical evidence is still lacking within African and post-conflict EFL contexts, making it unclear whether the TS-AR-SE pathway would function similarly or differently in an extreme resource-limited context. This is relevant because Somali EFL learners experience potentially compounding obstacles, including linguistic, emotional, and infrastructure-related obstacles that might amplify the importance of resilience as a mediating psychological resource. Therefore, this study sets forth the subsequent hypothesis:
H4: Academic Resilience (AR) acts as a mediator in the relationship between Teacher Support (TS) and Student Engagement (SE).
3 Materials and methods
3.1 Study design, participants, and sampling
The study objective was to assess the impact of teacher support and academic resilience on student engagement among EFL learners, particularly in settings with resource limitations like Somalia. The proposed model’s validity and hypothesis were evaluated employing a cross-sectional quantitative methodology; data were gathered from EFL learners attending the Faculty of Computer and Information Technology at Jamhuriya University of Science and Technology (JUST) in Mogadishu, Somalia, from May to July 2025. Survey participants were recruited based on a convenience sampling strategy due to limited resources (Hair et al., 2019), and because similar studies have adopted such a sampling technique (Alahmari and Alrabai, 2024; Gao et al., 2024).
Data was obtained through a structured online Google form; the questionnaire link was disseminated to students via the WhatsApp platform, which is used to share academic information and announcements with students. A consent statement was included in the questionnaire to reassure participants that their identity will be safeguarded and their responses will be solely used for research-related activities.
A total of 559 individuals voluntarily contributed to the study, with all responses being complete due to the mandatory nature of the questions in the survey. This sample size is considered adequate, as similar studies have utilized sample sizes in this range or less (Guo et al., 2025; Huang and Wang, 2023; Zhang, 2024). Although the sample size was sufficient, the research relied exclusively on students from the Faculty of Computer and IT at Jamhuriya University. This disciplinary and institutional homogeneity limits the generalizability of these findings to other faculties or universities in Somalia. Therefore, the results should be interpreted within the context of this academic environment.
Given the objectives of this study and the nature of the proposed conceptual model, we selected partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM), as it employs a variance-based approach that is particularly appropriate when the main goal is to maximize the explained variance of endogenous constructs and assess complex structural models that include mediation and moderation pathways, as in the present study (Hair and Alamer, 2022). Furthermore, PLS-SEM is well-suited for survey data drawn from a small sample, while still allowing rigorous assessment of measurement quality and predictive relevance.
3.2 Measurements used
3.2.1 Language learner’s resilience
Language learners’ resilience was captured through the Language Learners’ Resilience Scale (LLRS), which was adapted from the Academic Resilience Scale (ARS-30) and tailored to the context of second language acquisition (Cassidy, 2016; Kim and Kim, 2017). The LLRS includes 13 items across four dimensions: academic perseverance, emotional regulation, positive adaptation, and confidence in growth. Items are assessed on a 5-point Likert measurement spanning from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree), with elevated scores exhibiting greater resilience when confronted with academic and linguistic challenges. The scale has portrayed satisfactory internal consistency and construct validity. In the course of this study, Cronbach’s alpha of the LLRS was α = 0.715.
3.2.2 Students’ perceived EFL teacher support scale (SPEFLTSS)
To capture students’ perceptions of their teachers’ emotional, instructional, and autonomy support in the EFL classroom, the 12-item Students’ Perceived EFL Teacher Support Scale SPEFLTSS (Li et al., 2023). was adapted. The scale has three subdimensions, consisting of emotional support (e.g., “My teacher shows genuine care for my success in English”), instructional support (e.g., “My teacher provides clear explanations and helpful examples”) and autonomy support (e.g., “My teacher encourages me to take responsibility for my own learning”), all measured using a 5-point Likert-format scale, with responses from 1 (strongly disagree) to 5 (strongly agree). In the current study, the SPEFLTSS exhibited outstanding internal consistency, Cronbach’s α = 0.906.
3.2.3 Student engagement in schools questionnaire (SESQ)
The Student Engagement in Schools Questionnaire (SESQ) is a commonly used three-dimensional measure of student engagement spanning behavioral, emotional, and cognitive engagement. SESQ was developed to assess student engagement in educational settings along a continuum of how much and how effectively students internally and externally engage with their learning environment. SESQ measures behavioral engagement through efforts and participation, emotional engagement through interest or anxiety, and cognitive engagement through learning strategies (Fredricks et al., 2004; Lam et al., 2012). Every element on SESQ is rated on a 1–5 scale using a Likert-style scale, where 1 = strongly disagree and 5 = strongly agree, with elevated scores reflecting more engagement. SESQ has good psychometric qualities, including high internal consistency, and is also a broadly adopted instrument in education research examining student engagement and subsequently developing interventions aimed at improving academic outcomes. Cronbach’s alpha for this scale was 0.8, which demonstrates good internal consistency.
3.3 Ethical approval
The Jamhuriya University Research Ethics Committee (JUREC) provided ethical clearance for this study, with reference number JUREC/0145/CIT/052025. This research complied with the ethical standards specified in the Declaration of Helsinki. Before commencing the research procedures, consent from the participants was obtained through the faculty dean and heads of departments (HoDs), confirming that their involvement in this study was discretionary, and their data would be handled confidentially. SPSS 25 was utilized to describe the demographics, and PLS-SEM was adopted to examine the relationship between Teacher Support and Student Engagement among English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners: The Mediating Role of Academic Resilience for academic purposes. Both ethical considerations and methodological rigor were followed.
4 Results
The present study sought to analyze the influence of Teacher Support (TS) on Student Engagement (SE) with respect to EFL Learners: the mediating function of Academic Resilience (AR) for academic purposes. To achieve this target, we employed SmartPLS 4.1.0.6, applying the partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) method (Sarstedt et al., 2024), and checked the hypothesis model. PLS-SEM was utilized on account of its strength to appraise the complex structural model for a smaller participant pool (Hair and Alamer, 2022). Considering the purpose of this study, SEM emerged as a suitable method for examining complex modelling.
4.1 Respondents’ profile
A total of 559 individuals contributed to the study from the Faculty of Computer and IT at Jamhuriya University of Science and Technology. 61.9% of the respondents were male, while females represented 38.1%, reflecting the typical gender distribution in technology-related programs as shown in Table 1. In terms of academic year, 56.2% of the students were from the 2024 cohort (junior/first year students), and 43.8% were from the 2023 cohort (senior/s year students), ensuring a balanced representation of students at different points of their academic pathway.
Table 1. Demographic profile of respondents.
Regarding departmental distribution, the Bachelor of Computer Applications (BCA) program had the highest proportion of students (52.6%), followed by the Bachelor of Computer Multimedia (BCM) at 37.2%, and the Bachelor of Computer Networking (BCN) at 10.2%. The dominance of BCA in student numbers is justified by its status as the oldest program in the faculty, having been established in 2012 when the Faculty of Computer and IT was first founded. These demographic characteristics provide important context for understanding how student experiences with teacher support and resilience may vary across gender, academic level, and department, all of which may influence their levels of academic engagement.
4.2 Measurement model
Before evaluating the measurement and structural models, we assessed collinearity analyses and evaluated if CMB exists using Kock’s (2017) guidelines, and the result we found indicates that the variance inflation factor (VIF) was less than the benchmark of 3.3. Consequently, common method bias was not a concern for the study.
The measurement model was assessed through a multi-step process that examined indicator reliability, internal consistency, convergent validity, and discriminant validity of the model constructs (Hair et al., 2019). The items’ construct validity and convergent validity were evaluated through factor loading and average variance extracted (AVE), respectively. While internal consistency was examined through Cronbach’s alpha (α) and composite reliability (CR). Discriminant validity was evaluated through the Heterotrait-Monotrait (HTMT) ratio, Fornell-Larcker criteria, and cross-loadings, while collinearity was examined using variance inflation factor (VIF) values.
The measurement model assessed that all the items performed at acceptable levels of factor loadings, reliability, and convergent validity. As summarized in Table 2 and Figure 2, Cronbach’s Alpha (α) for all three constructs, Academic Resilience (AR = 0.715), Student Engagement (SE = 0.808), and Teacher Support (TS = 0.906), meets the threshold of 0.70, indicating strong internal consistency (Hair et al., 2022). Correspondingly, the composite (CR) for all constructs demonstrated values above 0.70, resulting in construct reliability. We also conducted convergent validity. All the Average Variance Extracted (AVE) values surpassed the threshold 0.50 (AR = 0.540, SE = 0.511, TS = 0.604), indicating that each construct displayed beyond half of the variance in its indicators (Fornell and Larcker, 1981).
Table 2. Outer loadings, validity, reliability, and collinearity (VIF).
Figure 2. Measurement model.
Furthermore, to assess the significance of the hypothesized paths, we utilized bootstrapping to avoid both type 1 and type 2 errors, which can cause unreliable results. Hence, the Variance Inflation Factor (VIF) values for all indicators met the threshold cut-off of 5, signifying that multicollinearity was not a problem, as shown in Table 2 (Ringle et al., 2023). Additionally, we evaluated discriminant validity using Heterotrait-monotrait ratio (HTMT), Fornell-Larcker and Crossing loadings Criterion, which is the square root of average variance extracted (AVE) for a construct. The Fornell–Larcker criterion assesses discriminant validity by comparing the square root of a construct’s AVE with its correlations to other constructs (Fornell and Larcker, 1981). These three criteria are used to assess discriminant validity, and all the values in Tables 3–5 are the results of discriminant validity. All HTMT values remained beneath 0.85, indicating sufficient discriminant validity (Henseler et al., 2015).
Table 3. Discriminant validity—HTMT criterion.
Table 4. Discriminant validity—Fornell-Larcker criterion.
Table 5. Discriminant validity—cross-loading criterion.
4.3 Structural model assessment
We evaluated the significant associations between latent variables; we utilized a bootstrapping sequence of 10,000 resamples using the PLS-SEM. This revealed several statistically significant associations across the latent variables. Table 6 outlines that teacher support has a positive and statistically robust effect on student engagement (β = 0.428, T = 6.582, p = 0.000). These strong and considerable associations support the hypothesis, signifying that students who observe higher support from teachers are inclined to be more engaged in their learning process. Similarly, teacher support has a robust and statistically significant effect, with a positive direction, on academic resilience (β = 0.285, T = 0.060, p = 0.000). This confirms that teacher support contributes meaningfully to students’ aptitude to rebound from academic obstructions and persist through obstacles.
Table 6. Direct relationships.
We also reported that academic resilience has a strong direct effect among all relationships tested (β = 0.513, T = 12.351, p = 0.000), showing that academic resilience is a substantial factor of student engagement. This reinforces the hypothesis that resilient students show an increased tendency to stay engaged academically. Moreover, the study demonstrated that teacher support also affected student engagement both directly and indirectly through academic resilience (acting as a mediator in the framework), with the indirect effect being statistically significant (β = 0.146, T = 4.626, p < 0.001) as shown in Table 7. Furthermore, the impact of teacher support on student engagement was weaker for the 2024 students cohort in comparison to the 2023 students, showing that the study year has negatively and significantly moderated the nexus between TS and SE (β = −0.159, T = 2.142, p = 0.032). Additionally, the findings established that teacher support had a stronger impact on resilience for male students compared to female students, with this gender disparity being statistically significant (β = −0.180, T = 2.100, p = 0.036) as depicted in Table 8.
Table 7. Mediation relationships.
Table 8. Moderation relationships.
A negative moderation effect means that the relationship becomes weaker in the comparison group. In this study, the negative coefficient for the study year in the TS, SE interaction suggests that teacher support has a weaker effect on engagement in the 2024 cohort compared to the 2023 cohort. Likewise, there is a negative coefficient for gender on the TS, AR interaction, which implies that the positive effect of teacher support on resilience is weaker among female students relative to their male peers. It is important to note here that the relationship is positive, and only the strength of the relationship differs across cohorts and gender groups.
Furthermore, the predictive power (R2) and predictive relevance (Q2) of the model were assessed (Table 9). The model accounted for only 5% of the variance in AR, representing a weak effect, meaning that TS accounts for a modest share of resilience. On the contrary, the model demonstrated R2 of 47.7% for SE, as shown in Figure 3, confirming that the explanatory variables in the model greatly forecast the criterion variable (SE) (Hair et al., 2019). In addition, the positive Q2 values show that the model exhibits adequate predictive ability for both variables, with strong predictive relevance for SE.
Table 9. Model’s explanatory power.
Figure 3. Structural model.
5 Discussion
This study investigated how teacher support and academic resilience influenced engagement within EFL learners studying at the Faculty of Computer and IT at Jamhuriya University of Science and Technology in Mogadishu, Somalia. The research is grounded in SDT and SST and assumes TS as an independent construct impacting AR and SE, while AR was hypothesized to operate as an intermediary in the relationship between TS and SE. Furthermore, the study proposed the gender and study year of the learners as moderators in the proposed framework.
The results have supported all proposed hypotheses of the study. Regarding the H1a, the study concluded that TS significantly and positively influenced SE in the EFL context. This is consistent with empirical findings in the general education and EFL context research conducted in Bahrain, Vietnam, and China by Ahmed et al. (2018), Cam Tran et al. (2025), Gao et al. (2024), and Yin and Luo (2024), underlining the indispensable role of teacher support in strengthening EFL learners’ engagement.
From the SDT perspective, teacher support is likely to induce engagement because it fosters a sense of relatedness, where students feel cared for, develops competence, where students have a clear explanation and get feedback, and preserves autonomy, where they have choice and voice in tasks. Together, when these needs are satisfied, students internalize learning goals and remain engaged even when faced with challenges. In parallel, SST suggests that teachers’ emotional, instructional, and instrumental support serve as critical resources that help alleviate the anxiety and uncertainty, thereby enabling students to invest cognitively and behaviorally in coursework.
This highlights that teacher support plays a foundational role in fostering students’ active involvement in the learning process, and becomes a functional substitute for missing resources, particularly in limited resource settings such as Somalia, where English is a foreign language that the vast majority of the population does not speak, and, at the same time, is a medium of instruction in university education across the country.
TS also positively and significantly predicted AR, supporting H2a. This is in line with similar findings from Turkish and Chinese EFL contexts (Guo et al., 2020; Hammad AlRashidi and Çakmak, 2024), indicating that TS acts as a key determinant in helping students bounce back from difficulties. As teachers offer empathy, resources, and comprehension, students get the courage to manage difficulties and persist in navigating challenges integrated into the language learning process. The positive relationship between TS and AR aligns with the SDT’s claim that competence support, through scaffolding and formative feedback, strengthens students’ belief that their effort will pay off, which is a physiological foundation for resilience. SST further explains that consistent emotional and instrumental support helps buffer against stressors in the resource-limited EFL learning environment. As stress is buffered and competence is affirmed, students are more willing to persist through setbacks, which is another psychological core of academic resilience.
Although teacher support (TS) significantly predicted Academic Resilience (AR), the relatively low explained variance (5.5%) suggests that other unmeasured variables likely influence resilience among Somali university students. Factors such as students’ socioeconomic status, family encouragement, peer relationships, and university-level support structures may play a substantial role in building resilience. In resource-constrained contexts like Somalia, where institutional and technological resources are minimal, students’ capacity to remain resilient often depends on external social and emotional networks rather than classroom-based support alone. Thus, while teacher support provides an essential academic and emotional foundation, broader contextual factors may dilute its direct predictive power on resilience outcomes.
Furthermore, AR was reported to significantly and positively predict SE in the EFL context, supporting H3. This indicates that resilient students are equipped with internal motivation to demonstrate a higher degree of engagement in the language learning process despite challenges, a critical step in mastering a secondary language. Similar findings were reported in broader educational and EFL contexts, Romano et al. (2021) concluded that learners with resilience attributes were more inclined to engagement among Italian high school students, while Liu et al. (2022) found resilience as a key antecedent of student engagement among Chinese EFL learners. The predictive potential of resilience underscores its significance as an important resource that fuels students’ motivation and engagement despite academic challenges.
The study also found that AR fulfills the role of a partial mediator bridging the association between TS and SE, supporting H4. This highlights that although support from teachers directly increases student engagement, this support also enables students to build resilience, which in turn translates into a higher level of engagement. This interesting finding aligns with those of Guo et al. (2025), which indicates that when learners perceive themselves as being emotionally assisted by their teachers, they are inclined to establish the aptitude to overcome setbacks, which subsequently nurtures their capacity to portray a higher level of perseverance and engagement in their learning. Similarly, Yuan (2024) indicated that when teachers help students, they learn to see problems as chances to grow and improve themselves.
The positive relationship between TS and AR aligns with the SDT’s claim that competence support, through scaffolding and formative feedback, strengthens students’ belief that their effort will pay off, which is a physiological foundation for resilience. SST further explains that consistent emotional and instrumental support helps buffer against stressors in the resource-limited EFL learning environment. As stress is buffered and competence is affirmed, students are more willing to persist through setbacks, which is another psychological core of academic resilience. This underscores the essential importance of fostering students’ resilience while offering broader support to enhance their involvement and achievement in EFL education.
Moreover, the Study year was observed to weaken the relationship between TS and SE, meaning that the interaction between teacher support and student engagement is stronger for students enrolled in the university in 2023 (older cohort) and weaker for students admitted in 2024 (young cohort). This finding is nuanced as none of the established literature in the EFL context has examined the moderating role of study year in the association between TS and SE. However, in another context, Liu and Li (2023) found that older high school students perceived a higher level of academic and instrumental teacher support, and when such support is present, its impact on engagement is more effective. This contrasts with Romano et al. (2021), who concluded that younger students generally experienced higher degrees of emotional support from their teachers, implying a potentially stronger relationship for younger students. These moderation patterns may be understood more clearly when viewed through the socio-cultural realities of Somali higher education. Senior students (2023 cohort) generally have more familiarity with university systems, academic routines, and teacher communication styles, enabling them to utilize teacher support more effectively to enhance their engagement. In contrast, freshers (2024 cohort) are still adapting to university life in a resource-limited environment and may not yet possess the academic confidence or self-regulation skills needed to convert teacher support into meaningful engagement. This may explain why the teacher support–engagement relationship appears weaker for the younger cohort.
With respect to the moderation effect of gender on the interplay between TS and AR, the study found that gender negatively moderates this relationship. This indicates that teacher assistance had a more pronounced impact on resilience for male students in comparison to female students. Both Li et al. (2023) and Romero-Rodríguez et al. (2023) revealed that male students expressed significantly higher emotional support than their female classmates, it is believed that this support could have a stronger influence on their academic resilience when it comes to dealing with challenges. On the other hand, Chu et al. (2024), referencing broader literature, noted that there is contradicting evidence on gender-based variations in perceived teacher support. To the best of our understanding, this association has not been directly investigated in preceding studies. Interestingly, Romano et al. (2021) has explicitly advised that subsequent research should be conducted to scrutinize the moderating influence of gender and other socio-demographic characteristics in the relationship between TS and AR; thus, this provides specific insights into a less-explored area.
This gender related moderation effect may be better understood through the lenses of the social and institutional dynamics of the Somali higher education sector. The majority of EFL instructors are male, and classes are mixed but often male-dominated. These social conditions may influence how students interact with their teachers. Male students tend to initiate discussions with teachers, ask questions, or seek clarifications more easily, which may enable them to benefit from teachers’ emotional and instructional support. Female students, though equally capable and motivated, may face subtle participation barriers in engaging proactively in a male-dominated environment. Thus, the same level of teacher support may not benefit female students as much. These contextual patterns do not reduce the value of teacher support for female learners but emphasize that the same support may operate differently across gender groups. This stresses the need for EFL teachers to adopt inclusive strategies that ensure all learners, irrespective of gender, are equally able to draw upon teacher support as a source of resilience.
6 Implications
This study enriches the body of language on the parameters influencing student engagement of EFL learners in under-resourced settings, such as Somalia, by delving into the interaction of teacher support and academic resilience in shaping the learner’s experience. The study outcome underlines the fundamental role of teacher support in directly cultivating engagement and simultaneously nurturing resilience as an approach to enhance engagement. Appraising the moderating effect of gender and study year in this dynamic correlation also extends the current body of literature and yields novel perspectives into how socio-demographic variables can influence the relationship between teacher support, academic resilience, and student engagement in the EFL context. The study also examines these dynamics within the Somali EFL setting and offers insights into a less explored geographical environment. Additionally, the proposed model explains nearly half of the variance in student engagement, showcasing the considerable explanatory power it possesses to predict how EFL learners remain engaged in their learning process.
Furthermore, the study findings grant several practical ramifications for teachers, EFL program leaders, higher education institutions, and policymakers. Educators should demonstrate empathy, provide timely feedback, ensure access to essential resources, create a conducive learning environment, and utilize tailored strategies to cultivate persistence and success among learners. EFL program leaders should integrate resources and activities that foster student-teacher relationships and enhance resilience into the EFL curriculum and syllabus. Higher education institutions ought to give precedence to professional development programs that furnish teachers with the competencies necessary to effectively engage students and manage cultural and contextual complexities in EFL classes. Finally, policymakers and stakeholders can use our findings to develop strategies and frameworks that ensure learners in resource-limited contexts experience supportive EFL learning environments.
7 Conclusion
The study aimed to enquire into how teacher support exerts influence on academic resilience and student engagement of ELF learners in Mogadishu, Somalia. Additionally, the study sought to analyze how this association is shaped by learners’ study year and gender. Our findings show that teacher support plays a significant role in nurturing engagement among EFL learners in the Somali educational context, both directly and via academic resilience. The resilience factor also served as a partial mediator in the proposed model, emphasizing that teacher support also has an independent effect on engagement. Furthermore, the study revealed variations in these effects based on the gender and the study year of learners, suggesting that while teacher support is crucial for the success of all learners, there is a need for tailored approaches to accommodate the diverse needs of distinct groups of learners. The study particularly added to the existing scholarly discourse by looking into the mediating role of academic resilience and the moderating effect of gender and cohort within the teacher support-student engagement dynamic nexus.
Although the structural model demonstrated significant pathways, the findings represent associative relationships identified within a specific timeframe. Therefore, conclusions about causality should be approached cautiously. Future longitudinal or intervention-based studies are essential to examine how sustained teacher support and resilience-building strategies influence student engagement over multiple semesters.
8 Limitations and future directions
Although the study yields a snapshot into how teacher support affects academic resilience and student engagement in the EFL learning context, the study was conducted in Mogadishu, Somalia, and findings are constrained to a specific demographic and background of students attending the Faculty of Computer & Information Technology at Jamhuriya University of Science and Technology. This homogeneity may affect learners’ perceptions of teacher support, resilience, and engagement, thereby limiting the external validity of the findings and the ability to generalize the evidence from the study. In that regard, the subsequent studies should replicate the model across distinct cultural, specialization, and socio-demographic contexts to examine whether the structural relationships remain stable in different educational and institutional environments. Additionally, a cross-sectional design was employed for this to capture the association between the constructs within a defined time frame, and there is a need to conduct studies with a longitudinal nature to trace the interdependent relationship between the study variables over the course of time and provide reliable insights into the causality of the constructs. Expanding the findings of this research, future scholarly studies should also investigate other factors, such as self-efficacy, which influence student engagement, and how the elements shaping student engagement vary across cultures and demographic backgrounds.
Furthermore, although the Language Learners’ Resilience Scale (LLRS) revealed acceptable reliability (α = 0.715), this value is comparatively lower than those reported for other constructs in this study, but acceptable (Hair et al., 2022). This suggests that while the instrument functions adequately in measuring resilience, further validation, refinement, and cultural adaptation are needed to ensure its full reliability and validity within the Somali EFL learning context.
Data availability statement
The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation.
Ethics statement
The studies involving humans were approved by Jamhuriya University Research Ethics Committee. The studies were conducted in accordance with the local legislation and institutional requirements. The participants provided their written informed consent to participate in this study.
Author contributions
MM: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Methodology, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. MK: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft. AA: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing – original draft. AB: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Writing – review & editing.
Funding
The author(s) declared that financial support was not received for this work and/or its publication.
Conflict of interest
The author(s) declared that this work was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Generative AI statement
The author(s) declared that Generative AI was not used in the creation of this manuscript.
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Keywords: teacher support, EFL, student engagement, academic resilience, Somali higher education
Citation: Mohamud MA, Khalaf MAA, Abdulle AW and Barre AO (2026) Investigating how teacher support promotes student engagement in Somali EFL classrooms: the role of academic resilience and student demographics. Front. Educ. 10:1717126. doi: 10.3389/feduc.2025.1717126
Edited by:
Mary Koutselini, University of Cyprus, CyprusReviewed by:
Hanwei Wu, Hunan Normal University, ChinaPriyatno Ardi, Sanata Dharma University, Indonesia
Copyright © 2026 Mohamud, Khalaf, Abdulle and Barre. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Mohamed Ahmed Mohamud, bW9oYW1lZC5haG1lZEBqdXN0LmVkdS5zbw==