Teachers do more than deliver subject knowledge. Every school day also places them in situations that demand emotional awareness, self-control, empathy, communication and relationship management. A new systematic review suggests these capacities are meaningfully connected with the social and emotional skills seen in their students.
Researchers synthesising evidence from school systems around the world found a moderate overall association between teachers’ social-emotional competence and students’ social-emotional competence. The meta-analysis drew on 38 studies reporting 196 effect sizes and included 264,642 participants, comprising 23,409 teachers and 241,233 students.
The pooled correlation was r = 0.26, with a 95% confidence interval from 0.166 to 0.361 and p < 0.001. In practical terms, classrooms in which teachers showed stronger social and emotional competencies also tended to contain students with stronger social and emotional competencies. The result does not mean that improving a teacher’s skills by a particular amount will automatically produce a corresponding change in every learner, but it provides a quantitative estimate of a relationship that education research has often discussed more conceptually.
The review brought together evidence from 65 studies
The study, published in Educational Psychology Review on 2 October 2026, combined a systematic review with a multilevel meta-analysis. The researchers initially identified 8,497 database records and another 12 records through snowball searching. After duplicates were removed, 5,206 unique records were screened against predefined eligibility criteria.
Sixty-five studies published between 2007 and 2024 ultimately entered the broader systematic review. These included 53 peer-reviewed journal articles, 11 dissertations and one conference proceeding. Thirty-eight of those studies provided the Pearson correlation data required for the quantitative meta-analysis.
The review covered preschool and kindergarten through Grade 12 settings across 32 countries. Primary schools were the most common setting, represented in 24 studies, followed by preschool or kindergarten in 20. Fifteen studies included lower-secondary settings and 12 included upper-secondary settings, with some research spanning multiple school levels.
Geographically, however, the evidence was uneven. Twenty-nine of the 65 studies, or 44%, were conducted in the United States. Roughly two thirds of the studies came from developed economies and only about one third from developing economies. That imbalance matters when considering how confidently the findings can be applied across different school systems and cultural contexts.
Social-emotional competence covers several different abilities
The researchers used a broad understanding of social-emotional competence, drawing on established frameworks that include self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, relationship skills and responsible decision-making.
Teacher self-awareness was the most frequently measured teacher domain, appearing in 32 studies. Teacher self-efficacy was particularly common within this category. Relationship skills were also widely studied, including teachers’ capacity to provide support, care, emotional responsiveness and effective communication.
For students, the literature most often examined self-management and relationship skills. Researchers looked at outcomes such as self-regulation, motivation, cooperation, peer support and the ability to maintain healthy relationships.
This breadth is useful because social-emotional competence is not a single behaviour. It is also one reason the pooled estimate needs careful interpretation. Studies differed in what they measured, how they measured it and which combinations of teacher and student competencies they compared.
The overall relationship was moderate, but it varied substantially
To account for studies contributing multiple related estimates, the researchers used a three-level random-effects model. This approach separates ordinary sampling uncertainty from variation among effects within the same study and variation between different studies.
The average correlation of 0.26 was statistically significant and was characterised by the authors as moderate within psychological research. Yet the analysis also found substantial heterogeneity. The Q statistic for the 195 degrees of freedom was 11,931.71, with p < 0.001, showing that the spread of results was far larger than would be expected from sampling error alone.
The variance decomposition makes that point particularly clear. Approximately 89.7% of the total variance was attributed to differences between studies, 9.7% to differences among effects within studies and only 0.7% to sampling variation.
That means 0.26 should not be treated as a universal classroom constant. It is an average across a diverse research literature. The strength of the teacher-student relationship can differ according to the skills being measured, the educational setting, the instruments used and characteristics of teachers and learners.
Most studies found positive links, but the evidence was not uniform
Across the broader systematic review, 45 studies, representing 68% of the eligible research, reported positive links between teacher and student social-emotional domains. Nine studies reported unexpected negative associations and ten reported non-significant findings.
The review also identified possible pathways through which teacher competencies may be connected with student outcomes. Eleven studies examined mediating factors and nine reported significant mediation. Teaching practices, classroom organisation and the number of social-emotional learning lessons delivered were among the mechanisms identified.
Several studies suggested that teacher self-efficacy may influence instructional practices, which are then associated with student self-efficacy, social skills or growth mindset. Other work pointed to student perceptions of learning value and fulfilment of basic psychological needs as potential links between supportive teaching and student self-regulation, mindfulness or compassion.
The intervention evidence was more mixed. Six trials targeting teachers included mindfulness programmes, social-emotional training and self-efficacy coaching. Some produced improvements in teacher competencies alongside more adaptive student self-management or social competence. Others found improvements for teachers without significant student changes, or no significant changes in either group.
The relationship may work in both directions
A central limitation in the existing literature is its tendency to assume that influence runs from teacher to student. Most studies investigated whether teacher characteristics predicted student outcomes. Only two studies explored possible reverse effects.
Real classrooms are likely to be more reciprocal. A teacher who regulates frustration effectively may help create a calmer learning environment. At the same time, a class of students who cooperate, regulate their own behaviour and respond constructively may make it easier for a teacher to remain emotionally regulated and confident.
The meta-analysis therefore supports an association, not a simple one-way causal chain. This distinction is particularly important because 91% of the studies in the review were quantitative and most of those were cross-sectional. Only five longitudinal studies, five randomised controlled trials and one quasi-experimental study were identified among the quantitative evidence.
What the findings could mean for schools
Social-emotional learning programmes often focus primarily on students. The new synthesis suggests that teacher development may deserve equal attention. If teachers’ own emotional awareness, self-management, relationship skills and confidence are connected with students’ competencies, schools may gain more from treating social-emotional development as a whole-classroom process rather than a curriculum delivered only to children.
This does not mean teachers should be held responsible for every learner’s emotional development. Student outcomes are shaped by families, peers, communities, school resources, individual temperament and many other factors. The considerable variation between studies reinforces that point.
Instead, the findings support a broader view of teacher professional development. Skills such as emotion regulation, constructive communication and relationship building may be relevant not only to teacher wellbeing and classroom management but also to the social environment in which students develop their own competencies.
Important limitations remain
The review has several limitations. Much of the evidence is cross-sectional, which makes causal direction difficult to establish. The included studies also used different definitions and measurements of social-emotional competence, contributing to the very high heterogeneity in the pooled results.
Self-report measures were common for both teachers and students, creating the possibility of reporting bias. Socioeconomic information was also missing from enough studies that the researchers could not examine it as precisely as they wanted.
The evidence base was geographically concentrated, particularly in the United States and other developed economies. More research from the Global South is needed before assuming that the same relationships operate with the same strength across different cultural, linguistic and educational systems.
The researchers also detected signs of publication-related asymmetry, although unpublished effects were well represented and were, on average, larger rather than smaller than published effects. Sensitivity analyses were used to test how robust the main conclusions were to methodological choices, ambiguous constructs, unpublished research and outliers.
Even with those cautions, the scale of the synthesis provides a useful benchmark. Across hundreds of thousands of teachers and students, stronger social-emotional competence on one side of the classroom was consistently associated, on average, with stronger competence on the other. The next challenge is to determine more precisely when that connection becomes causal, how influence moves in both directions and which forms of teacher support produce meaningful benefits for students.
Source Information
Study Title: Relations between Teachers’ and Students’ Social-emotional Competence: A Systematic Review and Multilevel Meta-analysis
Authors: Thuy-Anh Nguyen, Tarissa Hidajat, Ting Zhou et al.
Journal: Educational Psychology Review
Published: 2 October 2026
DOI: 10.1007/s10648-026-10218-4
