The Association Between Teacher-Student Conflict and Bullying Among Chinese Junior High School Students: A Moderated Mediation Model

Background School bullying poses a serious threat to adolescents’ mental health and social adjustment. While teacher–student conflict is a common relational stressor in school settings, its mechanisms linking to bullying remain insufficiently explored, particularly in junior high school contexts. Guided by ecological systems theory, this study examined the mediating role of deviant peer affiliation and the moderating role of self-control in the association between teacher–student conflict and bullying among Chinese junior high school students. Methods A cross-sectional survey was conducted in October 2024 with 1,973 students from four junior high schools in Jiangxi Province, China. Participants completed validated questionnaires assessing teacher–student conflict, deviant peer affiliation, self-control, and bullying behavior. Descriptive statistics, Pearson correlations, and moderated mediation analyses were performed using SPSS 26.0 and Hayes’ PROCESS macro (Models 4 and 59) with 5,000 bootstrap samples. Results Teacher–student conflict was positively associated with bullying behavior (β = 0.162, p < 0.001) both directly and indirectly via deviant peer affiliation (indirect effect = 0.066, accounting for 39.0% of the total effect). Self-control significantly moderated the direct path and both indirect paths, attenuating the effects of teacher–student conflict on deviant peer affiliation and bullying, as well as the effect of deviant peer affiliation on bullying. The moderated mediation index was−0.024 (95% CI:−0.042,−0.003). Conclusions Findings highlight that teacher–student conflict can contribute to bullying through deviant peer processes, while self-control serves as a protective factor buffering these effects. Interventions should target teacher–student relationship improvement, deviant peer affiliation prevention, and self-control enhancement to mitigate bullying risk in junior high school settings.