Anxiety as signal: a practitioner framework for reframing music performance anxiety.

School bullying is a widespread social problem within educational contexts (), with significant implications for the well-being of children and adolescents (). According to a UNESCO report in 2019 covering 144 countries and territories, almost one in three students (32%) had been bullied at school at least once in the previous month (). School bullying refers to intentional and repeated aggression toward a student perceived to have less power, perpetrated over time by one or more peers (). Previous studies have demonstrated that school bullying can lead to serious consequences for all parties involved, particularly for bully-victims. Students who are frequently bullied may suffer physical, verbal, or relational harm () and are more likely to report heightened stress, low self-esteem, loneliness, depression, anxiety (; ; ) and symptoms of posttraumatic stress (). In addition, bullying victimization has been linked to externalization problems such as poor academic performance (), social withdrawal (), engagement in addictive behaviors (), and even increased risks of self-harm and suicide (; ; ). Although bullying is a global phenomenon, its expressions and underlying mechanisms often vary by sociocultural context. Given these profound impacts, identifying modifiable school-based relational and environmental factors that reduce bullying risk is a critical research priority. In China, the educational setting is strongly shaped by collectivist values, where individuals are connected to close-knit social groups and place great importance on group harmony and collective interests (; ). This cultural context may heighten sensitivity to group norms and exacerbate peer exclusion for students who deviate from collective expectations (). Moreover, the strong emphasis on academic achievement can unintentionally overshadow students’ socioemotional needs, leading teachers and parents to pay insufficient attention to bullying experiences (; ). Recent large-scale evidence from China further shows that bullying victimization is associated with a wide range of psychological difficulties, with more severe victimization linked to substantially higher psychological risk (). This study focuses on secondary school students in Wenzhou, a southeastern Chinese city where boarding is common and parental absence due to work-related migration is frequent. In this context, teachers often play a central role in students’ academic and socioemotional lives (). Building on this context, we conceptualize the teacher–student relationship in terms of three domains: teacher emotional support, teacher instructional support, and disciplinary climate, and explore whether these domains are linked to school bullying victimization through serial mediation involving students’ school belonging and school exclusion.