Assessment of preservice teachers' creativity in developing instructional materials in Ibadan, Nigeria

This paper assessed preservice teachers’ creativity in developing instructional materials during their compulsory professional practice. It identified some challenges faced by preservice teachers in creating instructional materials. The paper aimed to stress the importance of instructional materials in teaching and learning, and the necessity to equip preservice teachers with skills required to creatively develop and select relevant instructional materials for facilitating effective teaching and learning. The study looked at the constructivist theory of learning to ascertain the impact of facilitating learning through diverse instructional resources that can meet the different learning styles of learners. The study adopted a descriptive survey design. A total of 308 penultimate and final year preservice teachers in the Faculty of Education at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, participated in the study. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data after it had been validated by experts. The reliability was ascertained using Cronbach Alpha after a pilot testing had been carried out with a limited sample who did not participate in the main data study. The reliability coefficient of .87 was obtained. Data analysis was done using simple frequency count, percentage score, mean, and standard deviation. The decision rule was set at 2.5. Findings from the study showed that even though most preservice teachers agreed to be potentially creative in developing instructional materials during their professional practice, they had limitations in practically demonstrating this because of several factors, which led them to adopt conventional resources such as cardboard drawings, charts, textbooks, etc. The study also identified limited resources, financial and time constraints, and large class size as challenges confronting preservice teachers' creativity in developing instructional materials.