PH.D. in mathematics education, master degree in mathematics and in technology in education. Full professor at An-Najah National University from 01-10-2018.
European Journal of Investigation in Health, Psychology and Education
The present study aims to identify the role of a Ministry of Education in meeting the challenges ... more The present study aims to identify the role of a Ministry of Education in meeting the challenges faced due to distance education as emergency education. The study participants were nine officials working at the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education. We used interviews to collect data and inductive content analysis to analyze these data. The study result indicates that the ministry carried out action related to the different educational aspects to meet distance education challenges. It is recommended that ministries of education strengthen their collaboration with the local community. The aim of this collaboration is two-fold: encouraging parents’ support of technology integration in education and encouraging their role in positively influencing their students’ perceptions of the use of ICT in learning. Teachers also need to engage in the change of students’ perception towards a more positive one regarding the influence of ICT on learning.
JRAMathEdu (Journal of Research and Advances in Mathematics Education)
This research aimed to analyze Algebra unit in both the old and new Palestinian curriculum for th... more This research aimed to analyze Algebra unit in both the old and new Palestinian curriculum for the ninth grade by using deductive content analysis based on the social semiotic approach. The results of this study showed that, in both books, the mental, behavioral, and verbal processes were more frequent than the relational, existential, and material processes. Moreover, the most frequent object used in both curriculum were the initial description, the rule, and the official definition. The most frequent representation of the mathematical object in both curriculum, was the algebraic representation, then the verbal, the numerical and the graphic representations. The research findings also indicate that in both books, the use of the pronoun “I” was the most frequent, then the pronoun “we” and then other pronouns. The imperative was frequent in the Algebra unit in the old curriculum, but less frequent in the new curriculum. The research findings, regarding the textual function in both bo...
Ethnomathematics makes school mathematics more relevant and meaningful for students. The current ... more Ethnomathematics makes school mathematics more relevant and meaningful for students. The current research aims to study the effect of using ethnomathematics in the context of Islamic ornamentation on learning the topic of congruent triangles. To achieve this aim, 30 10th-grade students engaged in ethnomathematics by learning about congruent triangles using Islamic ornamentation. Data was gathered via (a) videotaping and transcribing students’ learning and (b) students answering two parallel questionnaires that included proof questions on the three congruence theorems. The students were required to answer one questionnaire before the learning process and one after it. The main results indicated that the students succeeded in constructing the concepts of congruence and congruent triangles via the ethnomathematics learning process. In addition, the students succeeded in arriving at and formulating the three congruence theorems. Moreover, findings obtained from the questionnaires indica...
Researchers are interested in task design in distance learning. This task design is critical in e... more Researchers are interested in task design in distance learning. This task design is critical in emergency education that uses distance learning. The present research investigated mathematics and science teachers’ task design in distance learning during the emergency education due to COVID-19. Fourteen teachers participated in the research: seven mathematics teachers and seven science teachers. The data collection tool was the interview, and the data analysis tools were deductive and inductive content analysis, where the deductive analysis was based on the didactic situation framework. The research results indicated that the participating teachers could utilize the technological tools to design tasks that encourage the students’ devolution regarding the activities that they carry out. Furthermore, the use of the potentialities of the distance learning platforms enabled successful communication between the participants in the didactic situation. It is recommended that quantitative res...
Task design, in general, and task design in a technological environment, is attracting the attent... more Task design, in general, and task design in a technological environment, is attracting the attention of educational researchers. The present research investigates task design of prospective teachers in the Scratch programming environment. A total of twenty-three female prospective teachers participated in a professional development program. They were in their third academic year majoring in teaching mathematics and computer science in the middle school. The prospective teachers attempted to design mathematics-based programming problems. The present research utilizes the theory of didactical situations in mathematics, specifically the situation types, the paradoxes of the didactical contract and the situation components, to study the task design of the prospective teachers. It does that by focusing on one group of prospective teachers. The research results indicated that the prospective teachers were concerned mainly with the situation of information, situation of reference and situa...
Project-based learning is suggested for independent and collaborative learning that could positiv... more Project-based learning is suggested for independent and collaborative learning that could positively impact students’ learning. This study aimed to identify the role of project-based language learning in developing life skills of students through studying a case of a language class that included 80 students in two grade 6 classes in a private school. The study attempted to answer the following question: What is the role of project-based learning in developing students’ life skills in an Arabic language class? To answer this question, we adopted a theoretical framework that included the following categories of life skills: personal and collaborative skills, self-orientation skills, and collective responsibility. The following three data collecting tools were used during the study: observation, semi-structured interviews, and the teacher and students’ documents. Data collection lasted for two months from late September 2019 to December 2019. Data analysis followed the thematic analyse...
International Journal for mathematics teaching and learning, 2015
The study of function transformations helps students understand the function concept which is a b... more The study of function transformations helps students understand the function concept which is a basic and main concept in mathematics, but this study is problematic to school students as well as college students, especially when transformations are performed on non-basic functions. The current research tried to facilitate grade 9 students' learning of these transformations through engaging in exploration activities by using GeoGebra. Nineteen high achieving grade 9 students (around 15 years old) participated in 10 lessons (45 minutes each), where they used GeoGebra to solve exploration activities related to translations, reflections and stretches. We used the APOS theory to analyze these students' understanding and performance of function transformations. The results of the research indicate that the participating students differed in their APOS understanding of function transformations where almost sixty percent were approaching the object level and the rest were approachin...
This research examines the discursive positionings and emotions related to them of a group of thr... more This research examines the discursive positionings and emotions related to them of a group of three seventh class students. We videoed the group of students' discussions regarding the definition of terms associated with the circle topic and interviewed them regarding their emotions during the process of defining the geometric terms. We used the discursive analysis of Evans, Morgan and Tsatsaroni to analyze the participants' positionings and emotions. The research results indicate that the learning atmosphere in the group was positive due to type of leadership that prevailed, as well as to the collaborative working with a technological tool. This atmosphere resulted in the students having positive emotions about their learning.
Students have difficulty working with the parameter concept when solving mathematical word proble... more Students have difficulty working with the parameter concept when solving mathematical word problems and when working in mathematical contexts. Technological tools can be used to overcome such difficulties and one type of the technological tools which has been recently used in the mathematics classroom is the spreadsheets. This article describes how preservice teachers experienced solving mathematical word problems using the spreadsheets and how they developed their notions of algebraic concepts, especially the parameter concept, as a result of this use. The findings indicate that the preservice teachers developed their utilization of the spreadsheet environment to solve word problems. At the same time, they decreased the difficulties they confronted when working with parameters (before using the spreadsheets) and developed their notion of this concept (as a result of working with the spreadsheets), but they did not grasp the concept fully.
Ethnomathematics makes school mathematics more relevant and meaningful for students. The current ... more Ethnomathematics makes school mathematics more relevant and meaningful for students. The current research aims to study the effect of using ethnomathematics in the context of Islamic ornamentation on learning the topic of congruent triangles. To achieve this aim, 30 10th-grade students engaged in ethnomathematics by learning about congruent triangles using Islamic ornamentation. Data was gathered via (a) videotaping and transcribing students’ learning and (b) students answering two parallel questionnaires that included proof questions on the three congruence theorems. The students were required to answer one questionnaire before the learning process and one after it. The main results indicated that the students succeeded in constructing the concepts of congruence and congruent triangles via the ethnomathematics learning process. In addition, the students succeeded in arriving at and formulating the three congruence theorems. Moreover, findings obtained from the questionnaires indica...
This research intends to investigate the effect of collaborative computerized learning using GeoG... more This research intends to investigate the effect of collaborative computerized learning using GeoGebra on the development of the concept images of angle among seventh graders who were engaged with computerized collaborative activities that encouraged the development of five types of the angle concept images: verbal, authentic-life, graphical, numeric and dynamic. The research sample consisted of eight seventh grade students who worked collaboratively in groups of two. Two tests (a pre-test and a post-test) were administered to examine the development of students’ concept images of the angle. In addition, interviews were held with the participants to study this development. The Constant Comparison Method was used to analyze the data. The results showed positive effects of the visual and dynamic use of GeoGebra, as well as of the collaborative learning on the development of participants' concept images of the angle, especially the dynamic one.
In the present study, we report the preparation of 24 pre-service teachers who were in their thir... more In the present study, we report the preparation of 24 pre-service teachers who were in their third academic year, majoring in teaching mathematics and computer science in the middle school, for using metacognition in their mathematical problem solving. We used different tools to collect data: The pre-service teachers' solutions' texts of carrying out activities on solving authentic real life mathematical problems that emphasize metacognitive processes, the pre-service teachers' texts for the design and preparation of such activities that encourage students' metacognitive processes, interviews with the pre-service teachers, the discussion texts in the social network sites and observations of the implementation of activities. To analyze the data, we used the constant comparison method. The research findings indicated that the participating pre-service teachers developed their metacognitive skills as learners at the beginning and then as teachers. This development as te...
The present research examines whether the pre-service teachers’ preparation in using digital tool... more The present research examines whether the pre-service teachers’ preparation in using digital tools in their teaching develops their acceptance of these tools as teaching tools. Here, acceptance is measured in terms of the constructs of the technology acceptance model (TAM) introduced by Davis. It also examines the mediation of self-efficacy, anxiety of using digital tools for teaching mathematics and science and enjoyment of this use between the constructs of acceptance of digital tools for teaching. We used questionnaires that are part of TAM. Forty eight mathematics and science pre-service teachers participated in the study. We analyzed the collected data using SPSS 21. The research results indicate that the pre-service teachers’ preparation resulted in significant differences in their scores of affective and usage constructs associated with their acceptance of digital tools for mathematics and science teaching, except in the scores of anxiety.
STEM education is attracting the attention of researchers in the education of science, mathematic... more STEM education is attracting the attention of researchers in the education of science, mathematics, technology and engineering, for it encourages school practices that prepare students for real life professions. An important aspect of STEM education is the design of STEM activities, for this design influences how the activities mediate students’ experiences in the STEM classroom. In the present chapter, we suggest to consider this design in two lenses: The lenses of the activity inquiry and the lenses of the integration of STEM subjects. We further describe activities built by secondary school prospective mathematics teachers who were part of a teacher education program for preparing graduate students who finished their first degree in mathematics, engineering or computer science. The prospective teachers designed the STEM activities in the frame of a didactic course called “The didactics of teaching secondary school mathematics”. The research results indicated that the prospective ...
The recent years witnessed the emergence and growth of social networking sites as sites for socia... more The recent years witnessed the emergence and growth of social networking sites as sites for social interaction, and gradually as educational sites. This emergence calls for research regarding the potentialities of social networking sites for the teaching and learning of various disciplines. This article describes an experiment in using the Facebook, as representative of social networking sites, for teaching and learning an inter-disciplinary phenomenon: the golden ratio. The current research used the grounded theory model to describe and explain the various factors associated with the teaching and learning of inter-disciplinary phenomena in a social networking site. Here we are specifically concerned with the conditions and consequences of such teaching and learning. We carried out, together with our pre-service teachers, three experiments using the Facebook to involve the users in mathematical and scientific phenomena, history, talk and concepts. One pre-service teacher initiated o...
What affects students' effort in mathematics? What is the relationship of variables such as m... more What affects students' effort in mathematics? What is the relationship of variables such as math-level, anxiety, teacher support, self-concept and motivation with students' effort to learn mathematics? The relationships of the five variables with students' effort in mathematics are complex, which made us use a correlation cross-sectional design to study them. Doing so, we conducted a Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), using self-report measures of the various variables, to examine the relationships of the five variables with effort, for eighth, ninth and tenth students. We assumed that teacher support, which is a social variable, is one variable that needs to be an independent variable in the model. To account for the individual variable, we chose once student mathlevel and once student self-concept. Seven hundred and twenty eighth, ninth and tenth grade students completed the questionnaires. There were 183 males and 339 females. All participants were from northern West...
European Journal of Investigation in Health, Psychology and Education
The present study aims to identify the role of a Ministry of Education in meeting the challenges ... more The present study aims to identify the role of a Ministry of Education in meeting the challenges faced due to distance education as emergency education. The study participants were nine officials working at the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education. We used interviews to collect data and inductive content analysis to analyze these data. The study result indicates that the ministry carried out action related to the different educational aspects to meet distance education challenges. It is recommended that ministries of education strengthen their collaboration with the local community. The aim of this collaboration is two-fold: encouraging parents’ support of technology integration in education and encouraging their role in positively influencing their students’ perceptions of the use of ICT in learning. Teachers also need to engage in the change of students’ perception towards a more positive one regarding the influence of ICT on learning.
JRAMathEdu (Journal of Research and Advances in Mathematics Education)
This research aimed to analyze Algebra unit in both the old and new Palestinian curriculum for th... more This research aimed to analyze Algebra unit in both the old and new Palestinian curriculum for the ninth grade by using deductive content analysis based on the social semiotic approach. The results of this study showed that, in both books, the mental, behavioral, and verbal processes were more frequent than the relational, existential, and material processes. Moreover, the most frequent object used in both curriculum were the initial description, the rule, and the official definition. The most frequent representation of the mathematical object in both curriculum, was the algebraic representation, then the verbal, the numerical and the graphic representations. The research findings also indicate that in both books, the use of the pronoun “I” was the most frequent, then the pronoun “we” and then other pronouns. The imperative was frequent in the Algebra unit in the old curriculum, but less frequent in the new curriculum. The research findings, regarding the textual function in both bo...
Ethnomathematics makes school mathematics more relevant and meaningful for students. The current ... more Ethnomathematics makes school mathematics more relevant and meaningful for students. The current research aims to study the effect of using ethnomathematics in the context of Islamic ornamentation on learning the topic of congruent triangles. To achieve this aim, 30 10th-grade students engaged in ethnomathematics by learning about congruent triangles using Islamic ornamentation. Data was gathered via (a) videotaping and transcribing students’ learning and (b) students answering two parallel questionnaires that included proof questions on the three congruence theorems. The students were required to answer one questionnaire before the learning process and one after it. The main results indicated that the students succeeded in constructing the concepts of congruence and congruent triangles via the ethnomathematics learning process. In addition, the students succeeded in arriving at and formulating the three congruence theorems. Moreover, findings obtained from the questionnaires indica...
Researchers are interested in task design in distance learning. This task design is critical in e... more Researchers are interested in task design in distance learning. This task design is critical in emergency education that uses distance learning. The present research investigated mathematics and science teachers’ task design in distance learning during the emergency education due to COVID-19. Fourteen teachers participated in the research: seven mathematics teachers and seven science teachers. The data collection tool was the interview, and the data analysis tools were deductive and inductive content analysis, where the deductive analysis was based on the didactic situation framework. The research results indicated that the participating teachers could utilize the technological tools to design tasks that encourage the students’ devolution regarding the activities that they carry out. Furthermore, the use of the potentialities of the distance learning platforms enabled successful communication between the participants in the didactic situation. It is recommended that quantitative res...
Task design, in general, and task design in a technological environment, is attracting the attent... more Task design, in general, and task design in a technological environment, is attracting the attention of educational researchers. The present research investigates task design of prospective teachers in the Scratch programming environment. A total of twenty-three female prospective teachers participated in a professional development program. They were in their third academic year majoring in teaching mathematics and computer science in the middle school. The prospective teachers attempted to design mathematics-based programming problems. The present research utilizes the theory of didactical situations in mathematics, specifically the situation types, the paradoxes of the didactical contract and the situation components, to study the task design of the prospective teachers. It does that by focusing on one group of prospective teachers. The research results indicated that the prospective teachers were concerned mainly with the situation of information, situation of reference and situa...
Project-based learning is suggested for independent and collaborative learning that could positiv... more Project-based learning is suggested for independent and collaborative learning that could positively impact students’ learning. This study aimed to identify the role of project-based language learning in developing life skills of students through studying a case of a language class that included 80 students in two grade 6 classes in a private school. The study attempted to answer the following question: What is the role of project-based learning in developing students’ life skills in an Arabic language class? To answer this question, we adopted a theoretical framework that included the following categories of life skills: personal and collaborative skills, self-orientation skills, and collective responsibility. The following three data collecting tools were used during the study: observation, semi-structured interviews, and the teacher and students’ documents. Data collection lasted for two months from late September 2019 to December 2019. Data analysis followed the thematic analyse...
International Journal for mathematics teaching and learning, 2015
The study of function transformations helps students understand the function concept which is a b... more The study of function transformations helps students understand the function concept which is a basic and main concept in mathematics, but this study is problematic to school students as well as college students, especially when transformations are performed on non-basic functions. The current research tried to facilitate grade 9 students' learning of these transformations through engaging in exploration activities by using GeoGebra. Nineteen high achieving grade 9 students (around 15 years old) participated in 10 lessons (45 minutes each), where they used GeoGebra to solve exploration activities related to translations, reflections and stretches. We used the APOS theory to analyze these students' understanding and performance of function transformations. The results of the research indicate that the participating students differed in their APOS understanding of function transformations where almost sixty percent were approaching the object level and the rest were approachin...
This research examines the discursive positionings and emotions related to them of a group of thr... more This research examines the discursive positionings and emotions related to them of a group of three seventh class students. We videoed the group of students' discussions regarding the definition of terms associated with the circle topic and interviewed them regarding their emotions during the process of defining the geometric terms. We used the discursive analysis of Evans, Morgan and Tsatsaroni to analyze the participants' positionings and emotions. The research results indicate that the learning atmosphere in the group was positive due to type of leadership that prevailed, as well as to the collaborative working with a technological tool. This atmosphere resulted in the students having positive emotions about their learning.
Students have difficulty working with the parameter concept when solving mathematical word proble... more Students have difficulty working with the parameter concept when solving mathematical word problems and when working in mathematical contexts. Technological tools can be used to overcome such difficulties and one type of the technological tools which has been recently used in the mathematics classroom is the spreadsheets. This article describes how preservice teachers experienced solving mathematical word problems using the spreadsheets and how they developed their notions of algebraic concepts, especially the parameter concept, as a result of this use. The findings indicate that the preservice teachers developed their utilization of the spreadsheet environment to solve word problems. At the same time, they decreased the difficulties they confronted when working with parameters (before using the spreadsheets) and developed their notion of this concept (as a result of working with the spreadsheets), but they did not grasp the concept fully.
Ethnomathematics makes school mathematics more relevant and meaningful for students. The current ... more Ethnomathematics makes school mathematics more relevant and meaningful for students. The current research aims to study the effect of using ethnomathematics in the context of Islamic ornamentation on learning the topic of congruent triangles. To achieve this aim, 30 10th-grade students engaged in ethnomathematics by learning about congruent triangles using Islamic ornamentation. Data was gathered via (a) videotaping and transcribing students’ learning and (b) students answering two parallel questionnaires that included proof questions on the three congruence theorems. The students were required to answer one questionnaire before the learning process and one after it. The main results indicated that the students succeeded in constructing the concepts of congruence and congruent triangles via the ethnomathematics learning process. In addition, the students succeeded in arriving at and formulating the three congruence theorems. Moreover, findings obtained from the questionnaires indica...
This research intends to investigate the effect of collaborative computerized learning using GeoG... more This research intends to investigate the effect of collaborative computerized learning using GeoGebra on the development of the concept images of angle among seventh graders who were engaged with computerized collaborative activities that encouraged the development of five types of the angle concept images: verbal, authentic-life, graphical, numeric and dynamic. The research sample consisted of eight seventh grade students who worked collaboratively in groups of two. Two tests (a pre-test and a post-test) were administered to examine the development of students’ concept images of the angle. In addition, interviews were held with the participants to study this development. The Constant Comparison Method was used to analyze the data. The results showed positive effects of the visual and dynamic use of GeoGebra, as well as of the collaborative learning on the development of participants' concept images of the angle, especially the dynamic one.
In the present study, we report the preparation of 24 pre-service teachers who were in their thir... more In the present study, we report the preparation of 24 pre-service teachers who were in their third academic year, majoring in teaching mathematics and computer science in the middle school, for using metacognition in their mathematical problem solving. We used different tools to collect data: The pre-service teachers' solutions' texts of carrying out activities on solving authentic real life mathematical problems that emphasize metacognitive processes, the pre-service teachers' texts for the design and preparation of such activities that encourage students' metacognitive processes, interviews with the pre-service teachers, the discussion texts in the social network sites and observations of the implementation of activities. To analyze the data, we used the constant comparison method. The research findings indicated that the participating pre-service teachers developed their metacognitive skills as learners at the beginning and then as teachers. This development as te...
The present research examines whether the pre-service teachers’ preparation in using digital tool... more The present research examines whether the pre-service teachers’ preparation in using digital tools in their teaching develops their acceptance of these tools as teaching tools. Here, acceptance is measured in terms of the constructs of the technology acceptance model (TAM) introduced by Davis. It also examines the mediation of self-efficacy, anxiety of using digital tools for teaching mathematics and science and enjoyment of this use between the constructs of acceptance of digital tools for teaching. We used questionnaires that are part of TAM. Forty eight mathematics and science pre-service teachers participated in the study. We analyzed the collected data using SPSS 21. The research results indicate that the pre-service teachers’ preparation resulted in significant differences in their scores of affective and usage constructs associated with their acceptance of digital tools for mathematics and science teaching, except in the scores of anxiety.
STEM education is attracting the attention of researchers in the education of science, mathematic... more STEM education is attracting the attention of researchers in the education of science, mathematics, technology and engineering, for it encourages school practices that prepare students for real life professions. An important aspect of STEM education is the design of STEM activities, for this design influences how the activities mediate students’ experiences in the STEM classroom. In the present chapter, we suggest to consider this design in two lenses: The lenses of the activity inquiry and the lenses of the integration of STEM subjects. We further describe activities built by secondary school prospective mathematics teachers who were part of a teacher education program for preparing graduate students who finished their first degree in mathematics, engineering or computer science. The prospective teachers designed the STEM activities in the frame of a didactic course called “The didactics of teaching secondary school mathematics”. The research results indicated that the prospective ...
The recent years witnessed the emergence and growth of social networking sites as sites for socia... more The recent years witnessed the emergence and growth of social networking sites as sites for social interaction, and gradually as educational sites. This emergence calls for research regarding the potentialities of social networking sites for the teaching and learning of various disciplines. This article describes an experiment in using the Facebook, as representative of social networking sites, for teaching and learning an inter-disciplinary phenomenon: the golden ratio. The current research used the grounded theory model to describe and explain the various factors associated with the teaching and learning of inter-disciplinary phenomena in a social networking site. Here we are specifically concerned with the conditions and consequences of such teaching and learning. We carried out, together with our pre-service teachers, three experiments using the Facebook to involve the users in mathematical and scientific phenomena, history, talk and concepts. One pre-service teacher initiated o...
What affects students' effort in mathematics? What is the relationship of variables such as m... more What affects students' effort in mathematics? What is the relationship of variables such as math-level, anxiety, teacher support, self-concept and motivation with students' effort to learn mathematics? The relationships of the five variables with students' effort in mathematics are complex, which made us use a correlation cross-sectional design to study them. Doing so, we conducted a Structural Equation Modeling (SEM), using self-report measures of the various variables, to examine the relationships of the five variables with effort, for eighth, ninth and tenth students. We assumed that teacher support, which is a social variable, is one variable that needs to be an independent variable in the model. To account for the individual variable, we chose once student mathlevel and once student self-concept. Seven hundred and twenty eighth, ninth and tenth grade students completed the questionnaires. There were 183 males and 339 females. All participants were from northern West...
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Papers by Wajeeh Daher