Islamic education teachers` thinking styles and teaching methodologies : a case study in two secondary schools in Selangor

Abstract

Over the past few decades, learning styles, thinking styles, and cognitive styles have become an important part of our understanding of how people learn. Thinking styles are preferred methods of thinking or methods of processing information. Teachers’ teaching behavior is believed to be indicated by some portion of the teachers’ thinking or intellectual styles. Generally, some researches have not only indicated that it affects their own teaching behaviors, but it also influences teacher-student interaction and students’ learning outcomes. According to Zhang (2008), to some extent, teachers’ thinking styles are consistent with their teaching styles. The design of this research is exploratory and descriptive. The researcher used descriptive research to explore thinking style of Islamic education teachers in selected schools, and also to describe their present teaching methodology in qualitative term. Data from the selected schools were collected qualitatively from four Islamic Education teachers to examine their teaching experience. Finding shows that participants responded in different ways. In terms of function of thinking, three types of thinking style were responded by them; Legislative, Executive and Judicial. In terms of thinking level, only Local types of thinking style was responded by all participants. For learning and teaching type of thinking, again both Liberal and Conservative are found in the participants but with little emphasize and not in obvious reaction. For the teaching methodology employed, all respondent engaged in either lecture method or discussion method. While the researcher conducting this study, it is found that there is the relationship between the subject and the teaching style, which were found in the factors that emerge during the interview session on their types of thinking style. The factors are the nature of the students, the subject matter and the time limitations.