ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Psychol.
Sec. Cultural Psychology
Volume 16 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1656033
This article is part of the Research TopicIntercultural Communication and International StudentsView all 24 articles
How Teachers' Caring Behavior Impact Socio-cultural Adaptability of International Students? A Chain Mediation Model
Provisionally accepted
- 1Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China
- 2Zaozhuang University, Zaozhuang, China
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Enhancing socio-cultural adaptability (SCA) is crucial in optimizing the quality of international students’ education. Studies have confirmed the link between teachers’ caring behavior (TCB) and SCA, but its underpinning mechanism is unresolved. Based on the cultural adaptation theory, this study examines the interaction to determine whether TCB will impact international students’ SCA in an online education environment and investigate the mediating role of perceived social support (PSS) and resilience (RS) in the relationship. Participating international students (N = 872) completed TCB, PSS, RS, and SCA scales. We used SPSS 27.0 and AMOS 21.0 here and adopted the stratified linear regression and mediation analysis to measure the relationship among research variables. The results revealed that TCB is significantly positively associated with SCA; RS partially mediated the relationship between TCB and SCA. We also found that PSS can only affect the relationship between TCB and SCA through RS. These findings increase the understanding of the relationships between TCB, PSS, RS and SCA, provides theoretical support and practical suggestions for understanding and supporting international students’ SCA.
Keywords: teachers' caring behavior (TCB), socio-cultural adaptability (SCA), perceived socialsupport (PSS), resilience (RS), International students
Received: 10 Jul 2025; Accepted: 05 Sep 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Yin, Zhao and Wang. 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) or licensor 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:
Zilong Yin, Jiangsu University, Zhenjiang, China
Yuefang Wang, Zaozhuang University, Zaozhuang, China
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