THE MEDIATING ROLE OF TEACHERS’ INNOVATIVE BEHAVIOUR IN LINKING CURRICULUM INNOVATION AND INSTITUTIONAL RESOURCES TO LEARNING QUALITY IN ISLAMIC EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.30868/ei.v15i03.10655Keywords:
Inovasi kurikulumAbstract
Curriculum reform has entered Islamic early childhood education in the expectation that learning quality will improve, yet the classroom-level mechanism that turns a new curriculum into quality practice in Raudhatul Athfal is still rarely specified. This study examines, at the level of model specification and illustrative testing, whether teachers’ innovative behaviour mediates the relationships linking curriculum innovation, teacher digital competence, instructional leadership, and a supportive learning climate to learning quality in Islamic early childhood education. The study is positioned explicitly as a simulation-based methodological contribution rather than as an empirical survey. The hypothesised model was specified and then tested illustratively using a synthetic dataset consisting of 300 simulated observations generated to reproduce the response structure of a survey of Raudhatul Athfal teachers. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was applied, and a bootstrap of 5,000 subsamples was used so that direct and indirect paths could be examined. Within the simulated dataset the measurement model met all thresholds, with composite reliability between 0.905 and 0.921 and heterotrait-monotrait ratios not exceeding 0.65. Teachers’ innovative behaviour was predicted by all four antecedents, which jointly accounted for 45 per cent of its variance, while the model accounted for 36 per cent of the variance in learning quality. Curriculum innovation was associated with learning quality through complementary partial mediation, whereas the three remaining antecedents showed an indirect-only pattern through innovative behaviour. Because all observations are simulated, the results demonstrate the coherence and estimability of the proposed model and do not constitute empirical evidence about actual Raudhatul Athfal teachers. Empirical replication with field data is required before any population-level claim can be made.
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