From emotion regulation to moral judgment: culturally responsive education and the psychological pathways of youth moral reasoning.

Culturally responsive education (CRE) is increasingly discussed as an inclusive pedagogical orientation, yet its relationship with adolescents' moral reasoning remains underexplored. The present study examined whether CRE was associated with Grade 12 students' moral reasoning through differentiated dimensions of social-emotional competence (SEC), with particular attention to emotion regulation, empathy and perspective taking, and responsible decision-making. Participants were 500 Chinese senior high school students (46.6% male, 53.4% female; M_age = 18.38 years, SD = 0.49) from two schools. Students completed measures of CRE, SEC, and scenario-based moral reasoning. Psychometric analyses supported the measurement structure, and the nine-factor CFA showed excellent fit, χ 2(558) = 562.64, p = 0.437, CFI = 0.999, TLI = 0.999, RMSEA = 0.004, SRMR = 0.028. In the structural model, CRE was positively associated with emotion regulation (β = 0.284, p < 0.001), empathy and perspective taking (β = 0.465, p < 0.001), and responsible decision-making (β = 0.534, p < 0.001). Empathy and perspective taking (β = 0.309, p < 0.001) and responsible decision-making (β = 0.257, p < 0.001), but not emotion regulation (β = 0.027, p = 0.522), were positively associated with moral reasoning. The direct CRE to moral reasoning path was not significant after the SEC dimensions were included (β = 0.052, p = 0.287). Bootstrap analyses indicated significant indirect effects through empathy and perspective taking and responsible decision-making, but not through emotion regulation. The findings are consistent with an indirect-only pattern in which culturally responsive schooling is linked to moral reasoning primarily through specific socio-emotional pathways. The study extends work on culturally responsive pedagogy by showing that its relevance may include not only engagement and belonging, but also the psychological processes through which late adolescents reason about fairness, responsibility, and competing social claims.