أثر برنامج تدريبي في تطوير المعرفة المهنية في الهندسة لدى معلمي الرياضيات للمرحلة الأساسية وتحسين تحصيل طلبتهم في فلسطين
This study aimed at investigating the effect of a proposed training program on developing professional knowledge and students' achievement of Palestinian elementary schools' mathematics teachers in geometry. In order to attain this, aim the descriptive and quasi experimental methodologies were used, where the study was applied to two samples: the first sample was made up of elementary mathematics school teachers (n = 27) in the office of education, (14) of them were administered a training program about developing professional knowledge; their prior and subsequent performances were measured by a professional knowledge exam and by an instrument called teaching practices performance measure. The second sample was made up of eighth elementary grade students (n = 784), only (431) of them were taught by means of different teaching strategies while the others were taught traditionally. And after they studied the geometry unit, an achievement geometry test was done to compare students' subsequent performance. In order to test the hypothesis of the study, SPSS program was used. The findings of the study were as follows: the professional knowledge of mathematics' teachers in geometry was fair (the mean of teachers' scores on the professional knowledge test was (66.71). However, the study showed there was a statistically significant difference between the averages of the mathematics teachers' performance in the professional knowledge test before and after being exposed to the proposed training program and in favor of the dimensional application. Also, there was a statistically significant difference between the averages of the mathematics teachers' performance in the professional knowledge test between the experimental and control groups. But there were no statistically significant differences between the averages of the performance of the eighth elementary grade students in the prior marks in mathematics and subsequent performances on geometry achievement test between control and experimental groups. Based on these findings, several recommendations were presented. (Author's abstract)