Creativity characteristics in teaching students with learning disabilities among pre-service teacher in UPSI

Abstract

Due to developmental delay in cognitive, affective, psychomotor,language, and other aspect of difficulties, students with learningdisabilities having a lot of problems in learning process. So, teachingstudent with learning disabilities is quite challenging for pre-serviceteachers. Thus, to understand better how creative are they when teachingstudents with learning disabilities, this study is carried out toidentify to what extend pre-service teachers have the creativitycharacteristics based on Torrance creativity elements that includefluency, originality, flexibility and elaboration in teaching. A totalof 24 respondents were selected purposively based on the pre-serviceteacher's placement in selected schools. A qualitative case-study wasconducted and data was collected using recorded observation, interviewand document analysis. The findings indicate that respondents withcreativity characteristics are higher in the aspects of (1) fluency, (2)elaboration, (3) originality and (4) flexibility. For the frequency ofcreativity characteristics, it was found that respondents have thehighest frequency characteristics in (1) fluency, followed by (2)originality, (3) flexibility and (4) elaboration. The implication of thestudy conducted is important for the nation development becausecreativity is among the human capital aspect that is important since thefuture economy depends on citizens with creative and innovative minds.(C) 2016 The Authors. Published by IASE.