Differential item functioning of teaching practices in Islamic Education instrument (TPIED)

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to detect Differential Item Functioning (DIF) in Teaching Practice in Islamic Education instrument (TPIED) based on gender and stream. The instrument was administered on 150 from form four students Malaysian secondary schools’ from various groups within the Ministry of Education school in Selangor, Malaysia. The samples were clustered and randomly chosen. The TPIED used consists of 4 constructs which were (a) teaching skills, (b) personality traits, (c) Intelligence and (d) motivations and 95 items on a 5-point likert scale. Rasch model was used to examine both validity and reliability of the instrument, person’s reliability and item’s reliability is more robust compared to Cronbach’s Alpha. It also allows item elimination based on t-value and differential measure by Winsteps version 3.68.2. The person’s reliability value obtained was 0.95 while the item’s reliability value was 0.93. The findings also detected seven item were distinguished as DIF based on gender and eight items were detected as DIF based stream. The final analysis has dropped 13 items and maintained 82 items that were legitimate and reliable to gauge 4 constructs in TPIED. This TPIED, free from DIF, could be used to measure the four constructs in the Teaching Practice in Islamic Education instrument (TPIED) for Malaysian Islamic education, from Malaysian secondary schools students’ perceptions. Since the four constructs was recommended by al-Ghazali and Dunkin and Biddle.