This study investigates how students’ perceptions of school institutional justice are linked to their emotional regulation skills. Emotional regulation skills—encompassing stress resistance, emotional control and optimism—are recognised as key predictors of long-term well-being and professional success (Cole et al., 1994; OECD, 2018; Fan & Wang, 2022). Large-scale international initiatives, such as the OECD Study on Social and Emotional Skills, similarly frame emotional regulation as a core social-emotional competence that is comparable across educational systems (Kankaraš & Suarez-Alvarez, 2019; OECD, 2018). Against this context, understanding how school justice and support relate to students’ emotional regulation skills is relevant not only for China, but also for European and other international contexts engaged in SEL and school climate reforms.
Although numerous researches have highlighted the role of the school environment, including institutional equality and inclusiveness, in solving problems such as bullying and students’ distress (Ollove, 2010), systematic evidence is still needed to specify which school factors matter and why. Justice in the policy implementation process has therefore become a key focus of the educational research agenda. Guided by this context, this study focuses on school institutional justice (SIJ)—students’ perceptions that formal rules and policy processes (e.g. design, communication, eligibility, and implementation) are fair and transparent— and aims to address the research gap by exploring the relationship between school institutional justice and student emotional regulation skills.
The research questions are as follows:
1)To what extent are students’ perceptions of school institutional justice (SIJ) associated with their emotional regulation skills (ER)?
2)Do teacher support (TS) and peer support (PS) mediate the relationship between SIJ and ER at the student level, and which pathways are most influential?
3)How much variance in SIJ, TS, PS and ER lies at the school level, and do school-level differences mainly reflect a common “school climate” tendency rather than distinct institutional pathways?
Our conceptual and theoretical framework integrates several strands of scholarship. First, we build on justice and school climate research, which shows that school climate and justice perceptions are associated with students’ emotions, well-being, behavior and academic outcomes (Pretsch et al., 2016; Thapa et al., 2013; Wang & Degol, 2016; Xu & Chen, 2023). We focus specifically on institutional justice at the policy and rule level—such as fair discipline, transparent financial aid, and responsiveness to students’ suggestions—and treat it as a justice-related facet of the broader school climate (Sabbagh & Resh, 2016; Resh, 2018).
Then, we conceptualize teacher and peer support as relational mechanisms through which institutional justice “reaches” students. Teacher emotional and instrumental support is known to foster engagement, adaptive academic emotions and socio-emotional adjustment (Lei et al., 2018; Reyes et al., 2012; Ruzek et al., 2016; Wentzel et al., 2016). Peer support and classroom peer ecology similarly relate to students’ engagement, stress and emotional regulation (Hendrickx et al., 2016; Hoferichter et al., 2022; Neve et al., 2023; Zhang et al., 2024). In our model, a just institutional environment is expected to enable teachers to implement fair, caring practices and to cultivate a supportive peer ecology, which in turn promote students’ emotional regulation skills.
Finally, our conceptualization of emotional regulation skills is anchored in the OECD social and emotional skills framework, making the constructs conceptually comparable with ongoing international and European work on SEL (OECD, 2018; Kankaraš & Suarez-Alvarez, 2019). By applying multilevel structural equation modelling to a large, randomly sampled dataset of 62,723 students across 50 schools, the study aims to contribute to cross-national discussions on how institutional fairness, teacher practices and peer relations can be aligned to support students’ emotional regulation and broader socio-emotional development.

Sample and procedure This study was conducted within the three-year Basic Education Quality Improvement Initiative in Xi’an, China. A stratified one-stage cluster sampling design was used, with administrative districts as strata and schools as primary sampling units selected by equal-probability simple random sampling. All Grade 4 and above students in sampled schools were invited to participate. The final sample included 62,723 students (M_age = 12.66, SD = 1.99) from 50 schools, of whom 50.3% were female. Surveys were administered in classrooms by trained external proctors in the absence of teachers or school staff. Ethical approval was obtained, and informed consent was secured from schools and participating students. Measures All items were rated on a 5-point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree). Instruments were translated from English into Chinese using Brislin’s back-translation procedure and reviewed by education researchers, principals and teachers for contextual appropriateness. A pre-test with 405 students was used to refine wording. School institutional justice (SIJ) was measured with six items adapted from work on school climate and policy justice, capturing perceived fairness of school rules, need-based support and procedural justice in policy implementation. Teacher support (TS) was assessed with six items adapted from a classroom social environment scale and revised to reflect the Chinese context (e.g., after-school services under the “double-reduction” policy). Peer support (PS) was measured with seven items adapted from a School Climate Scale, focusing on respectful, helpful and caring peer relations and perceived appropriateness of class size. Emotional regulation skills (ER) were measured using 15 items based on the OECD Social and Emotional Skills framework, covering stress resistance, emotional control and optimism. Student covariates included age, gender, parents’ marital status, number of children in the family and perceived family economic status. Data analysis Descriptive statistics were computed in SPSS 26. Construct and discriminant validity were examined via confirmatory factor analysis. Null two-level models were estimated to obtain ICC(1) and ICC(2), supporting the use of multilevel modelling. Multilevel structural equation modelling was conducted in Mplus 8 using TYPE = TWOLEVEL and the MLR estimator to separate within-student and between-school variance. Model fit was evaluated using CFI, TLI and RMSEA, with CFI/TLI > .90 and RMSEA < .08 indicating acceptable fit. Indirect effects were estimated via MODEL CONSTRAINT with bootstrap confidence intervals (5,000 resamples). Alternative models (direct-only, single mediator, parallel and chain mediators) were compared using fit indices.

This study examined how students’ perceptions of school institutional justice are related to their emotional regulation skills, and tested the mediating roles of teacher and peer support using a large, stratified sample of 62,723 students nested within 50 schools. By applying multilevel structural equation modelling, we distinguished student-level processes from school-level differences and provided a more precise test of the proposed mechanism. At the within-student level, school institutional justice was positively associated with students’ emotional regulation skills. Although the direct path from institutional justice to emotional regulation was small, the total effect was substantial and was transmitted predominantly through relational processes. Teacher support emerged as the primary mediator, with an additional contribution from a chain pathway in which institutional justice was associated with higher teacher support, which in turn fostered more supportive peer relations, ultimately promoting better emotional regulation skills. In contrast, the peer-support-only pathway was very small, suggesting that peer processes play a complementary rather than primary role in this mechanism. At the between-school level, institutional justice, teacher support and peer support showed very high intercorrelations, and their structural paths to emotional regulation were small and statistically unstable. This pattern indicates that school-level variation in these constructs largely reflects a common school climate tendency rather than distinct institutional pathways, reinforcing the decision to focus substantive interpretation on within-school processes. Overall, the findings highlight that, within schools, perceptions of just and responsive institutional practices are linked to students’ emotional regulation skills chiefly through supportive relationships with teachers and, secondarily, peers. For policy and practice, the results suggest that efforts to enhance institutional fairness need to be closely integrated with initiatives that strengthen teacher–student and peer relationships if schools are to effectively foster students’ emotional regulation and broader socio-emotional development.

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