The relationship among supervisor support, academic passion, academic engagement, and critical thinking in Guangdong tourism management graduate students

Abstract

Critical thinking is essential for individual creativity, professional competence, and the competitive advantage of graduate students. While supervisors are recognized as pivotal in cultivating this skill, the mechanisms underlying their influence remain unclear. Grounded in social information processing theory, this study examines the direct effect of supervisor support on graduate students’ critical thinking, as well as the sequential mediating roles of academic passion and academic engagement. Survey data from 494 graduate students, analyzed using hierarchical regression, reveal that supervisor support positively enhances critical thinking. Moreover, academic passion and engagement sequentially mediate this relationship, whereby supervisor support fosters greater academic passion, which in turn strengthens academic engagement, ultimately improving critical thinking. These findings contribute to theoretical understanding of the pathways linking supervisory support to critical thinking and offer practical implications for enhancing graduate education through targeted supervisory strategies.