Professional Ethics, Work Experience, and Teacher Performance: Examining Student Engagement as a Mediator

This study aims to analyze the influence of professional ethics and work experience on teacher performance, with student engagement as an intervening variable. A quantitative approach was used in this study, using the Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) analysis method through the SmartPLS application. Data were collected from several active teachers who met the participation criteria in this study. The test results showed that professional ethics had a significant direct effect on teacher performance and also indirectly through student engagement. Meanwhile, work experience was proven to have a significant direct effect on teacher performance, but did not have an indirect effect through student engagement. This finding is supported by the R-square value for student engagement of 0.926 and teacher performance of 0.852, indicating that the model has high explanatory power. The goodness-of-fit test also confirmed the feasibility of the research model. These findings highlight the importance of strengthening teacher professional ethics and enhancing student engagement strategies to support teacher performance improvement. This study also confirms that work experience remains an important aspect, but needs to be combined with a participatory pedagogical approach for maximum results.