The Relationship between Teachers' Misbehavior and Students' Scientific Literacy: the Mediation Effect of Students' Scientific Interest

To put emphasis on students' scientific literacy and cultivate it has been an essential theme of contemporary education. This study analyzed 9841 middle school students from PISA 2015 China, used scientific interest as a mediator explores the influence of teachers' misbehavior on students' scientific literacy performance. Based on controlling the irrelevant confounding variables at the student level and the school level, and using the multi-level mediation effect model as a method, which can reach conclusions as follows: 1) teachers' misbehavior had no significant direct effect on students' scientific literacy performance; 2) teachers' misbehavior had a significant negative effect on students' scientific interest; 3) students' scientific interest had a significant positive effect on their scientific literacy performance; 4) teachers' misbehavior had an indirect negative effect on students' scientific literacy performance through the mediation effect of scientific interest. This mediating effect was a completely multi-level mediation. Therefore, schools should boost the quality of teachers, strengthen the construction of teacher ethics, improve the standards of teacher education, and establish a more comprehensive teacher management system to reduce the occurrence of teachers' misbehavior. Teachers should pay more attention to cultivate students' scientific interest during the educational process to promote the development of students' scientific literacy.