The relationship between perceived teacher support and student engagement in Chinese junior high school music classrooms: the role of learning motivation.

Student engagement in music classrooms is important because it reflects students' active participation in listening, performing, and creative activities and is associated with academic, social, and psychological outcomes. Although teacher support has been widely linked to student engagement, the indirect association between perceived teacher support, music learning motivation, and engagement in music education remains underexplored, especially in general school settings. This mixed-methods study examined associations among students' perceived teacher support, music learning motivation, and engagement in junior high school music classrooms. Survey data were collected from 568 junior high school students in urban and rural areas of Liaoning Province, Northeast China. Quantitative analyses examined associations among perceived teacher support, music learning motivation, and student engagement, and the SPSS PROCESS macro with 5,000 bootstrap samples was used to estimate the statistical indirect association. Semi-structured interviews with 15 students were analyzed through a three-level coding procedure to explain students' learning experiences. The results showed significant positive associations among perceived teacher support, music learning motivation, and student engagement. Music learning motivation was statistically associated with the link between perceived teacher support and student engagement, and the bootstrap confidence interval for the indirect association did not include zero. Qualitative findings indicated that encouragement, emotional care, clear explanation, interactive support, and content aligned with students' interests and abilities helped explain how students translated supportive classroom experiences into confidence, interest, and willingness to participate. Because the study used cross-sectional self-report data, the findings should be interpreted as associational rather than causal.