This study develops and validates an integrated model explaining teachers’ core competence, focusing on three antecedents-teaching professionalism, workplace embeddedness, and innovation capability-with teachers’ job satisfaction as the key mediator that converts capabilities into sustained outputs. Using a questionnaire survey of university faculty, we distributed 800 surveys and collected 713 valid responses, for an effective response rate of 89%. The results show: (1) teaching professionalism positively enhances both job satisfaction and core competence; (2) within innovation capability, exploitation contributes more to job satisfaction, whereas exploration exerts a stronger influence on both subdimensions of core competence; (3) job satisfaction has a stable but moderate positive effect on core competence; and (4) the two subdimensions of core competence are highly correlated, indicating that institutional and process knowledge capabilities are mutually reinforcing. Theoretically, drawing on RBV/KBV, dynamic capabilities, social capital, and the JD-R framework, this study integrates the evidence chain among capability, satisfaction, and output, and proposes testable second-order process constructs. Practically, it offers governance-level investment priorities and evaluation indicators, integrating professional learning communities, deep workplace linkages, and value-aligned digital/AI integration into a single closed-loop management cycle to drive evidence-based improvements in curriculum and assessment, thereby enabling teachers to consistently deliver high-quality learning outcomes. © 2025, Expert Projects. All rights reserved.
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