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

## TL;DR

This study explores how supervisor support helps graduate students in tourism management develop critical thinking through academic passion and engagement.

## Contribution

It identifies a sequential mediation pathway of academic passion and engagement linking supervisor support to critical thinking.

## Key findings

- Supervisor support positively enhances critical thinking in graduate students.
- Academic passion and engagement sequentially mediate the effect of supervisor support on critical thinking.
- The findings offer practical strategies for improving graduate education through supervisory support.

## 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.