An Empirical Investigation of Teachers’ Professional Competence on Undergraduate Students’ Academic Satisfaction: The Mediating role of Teaching & Learning Environment

It is widely believed that a teacher's professional competencies such as their pedagogical topic knowledge, self-efficacy, and teaching enthusiasm are crucial to students' academic success. Additionally, the teaching and learning environment is thought to operate as a mediator between students' academic happiness and teachers' professional competencies. The aim of the current study was to determine how teachers' professional competencies such as their knowledge of pedagogical content, their self-efficacy, and their enthusiasm for teaching affect undergraduate students' academic satisfaction with the teaching and learning environment as a mediator. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from 336 sample cases of Bachelor of Education, Honors (B. Ed, Hons) students at higher education institutions in Makran Division, Pakistan, using the stratified sampling technique. SMART PLS-SEM was used to evaluate the data, and the results showed a statistically significant correlation between the measures of students' academic satisfaction and teachers' professional abilities. This relationship is also mediated by the teaching and learning environment. The study suggested that in order to improve student satisfaction and performance, higher education institutions should prioritize the most critical components of teachers' professional competencies and create conducive teaching and learning environment.