Affective Teacher–Student Relationships and Students' Engagement and Achievement: A Meta-Analytic Update and Test of the Mediating Role of Engagement

The present study took a meta-analytic approach to investigate whether students' engagement acts as a mediator in the association between affective teacher–student relationships and students' achievement. Furthermore, we examined whether results differed for primary and secondary school and whether similar results were found in a longitudinal subsample. Our sample consisted of 189 studies (249,198 students in total) that included students from preschool to high school. A distinction was made between positive relationship aspects (e.g., closeness) and negative relationship aspects (e.g., conflict). Meta-analytic structural equation modeling showed that, overall, the associations between both positive…