BECE. Newsletter 

Vol.11, No.1, 2022 1471 

 

 

 

 

Can Teacher Participation in School Governance 

Improve Student Academic Performance? 

By Fan, Y., & Fan, G. 
Correspondence to: Guorui Fan, East China Normal University, China. E-mail: 

grfan@ecnu.edu.cn 

HIS study published in Modern Education Management uses the data of 

9,841 students from the Program for International Student Assessment 

(PISA) 2015 in four provincial administrative regions of China as sample to 

analyze the impact of teacher participation in school governance on student 

academic performance. Since there are significant differences in student aca-

demic performance among various schools, the multi-layer regression model 

is adopted to address the question “whether teacher participation in school 

governance can improve student academic performance”. The findings are as 

follows. 

 Teacher participation in school governance significantly affects stu-

dent academic performance. The results of the two-layer regression 

model show that raising teacher participation level is conducive to 

improving students’ overall academic results. It means that teacher 

participation in school governance has a positive effect on school 

education quality. Besides, high level of teacher competence as well 

as adequate school education resources and teacher supply positively 

affects student academic performance.   

 Teacher participation in personnel and curriculum management can 

effectively improve student academic achievement. Descriptive sta-

tistics show that Chinese teachers engage intensively in curriculum-

related decision-making but have a low participation in personnel 

and financial management. The results of the two-layer regression 

model indicate that teacher participation in both personnel and cur-

riculum management can significantly promote student academic 

performance, indicating that the clarification of teachers' rights in 

school affair administration is beneficial to improving the quality of 

teacher participation, thus promoting student academic progress. 

 High competence of teachers can significantly enhance student aca-

demic performance. The results of empirical research show that the 

regression coefficient of the interaction term between teachers' com-

petence and teacher participation is positive (a positive coefficient of 

T 

mailto:grfan@ecnu.edu.cn


 

Vol.11, No.1, 2022 1472 

interaction term means the effect of independent variables on de-

pendent variables increases with strengthened moderating variables). 

In addition, the coefficient of interaction term between teacher com-

petence and teacher participation in teaching administration is also 

significantly positive, which demonstrates that participation of high 

competence teachers in student assessment, student discipline, and 

other affairs can effectively improve student academic performance. 

Based on the research results, the study suggests that schools should 

integrate the theory of Good Governance and the idea of co-governance into 

school internal administration. Besides, schools should optimize the mecha-

nism to encourage teacher participation in school governance and implement 

law-abiding school governance. Meanwhile, teachers should increase their 

awareness of pro-active participation in school governance and place a pre-

mium on professional development in order to enhance the quality of their 

participation and to promote student academic progress. 

 

Source: Modern Education Management, 2022; 2022(2):84-93.