From Institutional Resources to Digital Pedagogical Practice: A Mixed-Methods Analysis of Foundational Knowledge Capability in Vietnamese Teacher Education

Digital transformation in teacher education is often framed as technological provision, acceptance, or the integration of technological, pedagogical, and content knowledge. Less attention has been given to how institutions develop and activate the foundational knowledge resources associated with teacher educators’ digital practice. This mixed-methods study introduces Foundational Knowledge Capability (FKC), a common self-perceived capability manifested in content, pedagogical, and technological knowledge, and positions it within the Digital Human Resource Approach for Teacher Educators (DHRA-TE). Survey data from 277 Vietnamese teacher educators were analyzed using partial least squares structural equation modeling and integrated with open-ended accounts of facilitating conditions, barriers, and proposed solutions. Institutional resources were associated with academic culture, culture with FKC, and FKC with motivation and expectancy. FKC had no significant direct association with behavioral intention, whereas its indirect association through motivation was significant. Academic culture was directly associated with reported pedagogical application, but behavioral intention was not. Qualitative findings related this intention–practice gap to infrastructure, connectivity, cost, workload, time, and student readiness. FKC is therefore positioned not as a reduced TPACK construct but as a complementary, capability-oriented construct. Within the limits of a cross-sectional, self-report design, the findings support interpreting digital pedagogical practice as associated with an organization-embedded sequence of resource provision, cultural institutionalization, capability development, motivational activation, and implementation opportunity.