Validity and Reliability of Preschool Teacher’s Creative Teaching Instrument for Children’s Language Arts: A Pilot Study of The Rasch Measurement Model

Abstract

This pilot study was conducted to examine and verify the validity and reliability of Preschool Teacher’s Creative Teaching Instrument for Children’s Language Arts. This questionnaire instrument consisted of 45 items and was distributed to 50 preschool teachers from the Larut Matang and Selama district in Perak. This instrument was developed to measure the nine main constructs of this study, as follows: encouraging students to learn freely, working together with students in learning, motivating students, withholding judgement on creative ideas, encouraging flexible thinking, encouraging students to conduct self-assessment of the ideas generated, taking into account all suggestions and questions put forward by students, offering students the chance to do tasks, and helping students to overcome disappointment, if they face failure upon trying something new. This approach was used to examine the validity and reliability of the items and the respondents in this study, which emanated from the Rasch Measurement Model. This approach was more valid and well-grounded compared to only focusing on the output produced by Cronbach’s alpha. The Winsteps software, version 3.68.2, was used to analyse four diagnoses that were performed on functional items: (i) item reliability and separation; (ii) detect the polarity of items that measure the constructs based on the value of PTMEA CORR; (iii) the fit of constructing items; and (iv) unidimensionality to determine the dependent items based on the standard residual correlation value. At the end of the analysis, 45 items were found to meet the inspection criteria, in accordance with the Rasch Model. The final instrument recorded 45 items that can be used to measure the nine constructs of this study.