Factors influencing creative teaching among teachers in Islamic private schools in Kuala Lumpur

Abstract

Creative teaching is considered as an essential technique and a systematic learning approach in education that brings delight and meaning to an individual’s condition. An absence of creativity leads to the lack of art, literature, science, innovation, problem solving and progress. The recent calls in education for an implementation of authentic activities and real world problem solving necessitate students’ engagements with contents of curriculum in flexible and creative ways of teaching. However, Muslims were dissatisfied with the traditional method of teaching in Islamic schools as they realized that this method of teaching does not allow for critical and creative thinking; leaving Muslim educators in a dilemma. This study is generally aimed to investigate the factors influencing creative teaching amongst the teachers of Islamic private schools (IPS). This study used quantitative research method which consisted of surveys adopted from the questionnaires for creative teaching factors and administered to 180 teachers from four selected Islamic schools. A stratified sampling technique was used in this study. The data was analysed quantitatively using the descriptive analysis, Independent Sample t-Test and ANOVA. The findings showed that the creative teaching of teachers in IPS is profoundly influenced by motivation, personal effort, learning attitude, teaching belief, school environment, teaching commitment, personal knowledge and growing up experience. In addition, the result identified the main factors influenced creative teaching of teachers at IPS was the personal efforts, teaching beliefs, teaching commitment and personal knowledge. Lastly, the findings indicated that there were statistically significant differences in some factors influencing creative teaching of teachers at IPS in terms of respondents’ demography while others were not significant. Based on the findings, the researcher suggested the need for a solid body of experienced creative professional in response to the diverse range of attitudes towards creative teaching among the Islamic private schools.