Teaching Practices, Student Engagement, and Learning Outcomes in China’s Ideological and Political Courses: A Mediation Analysis

Abstract

Ideological and political courses are compulsory in every Chinese university, yet how their teaching shapes learning remains underexamined. This study examined how five teaching practices—teaching clarity, instructional design, interactive methods, formative feedback, and value integration—relate to learning outcomes in these courses, and whether student engagement mediates those relationships. Using a quantitative cross-sectional design, survey data were collected from 400 undergraduates and analysed with reliability testing, Pearson correlation, multiple regression, and a mediation analysis based on the causal-steps procedure, supplemented by bias-corrected bootstrapping with 5,000 resamples. All five teaching practices were positively and significantly associated with learning outcomes, together explaining 72.5% of the variance, and student engagement partially mediated every relationship, with all indirect effects significant. Interactive methods and value integration were the strongest contributors. The findings extend student engagement theory and constructivist learning theory to a compulsory, value-laden curriculum and identify engagement as the mechanism linking effective teaching to learning.