Unlike most neighbouring countries in the world, teachers in the occupied territories of Palestine face extraordinary conditions and challenges. These are due to the continued Israeli occupation. This article reports on a large-scale survey of Palestinian teachers. It explores the impact of the occupation on the professional lives of the teachers around Nablus, and indirectly on their students and communities, and on their digital responses. Follow-up focus groups explore their feelings, experiences and reactions, providing greater insights into this complex and troubling situation. The article underpins further work on appropriate digital literacy. It does however also provide an insight into the challenges to rigorous fieldwork outside the mainstream of the developed North and specifically in a region of conflict and occupation.
The present study seeks to identify teachers' perceptions regarding STEM teaching professional development and to identify the factors that facilitate or hinder the success of teachers' professional development. The participants of the study were 35 teachers. A qualitative approach was used for data collection by conducting semistructured interviews with 11 teachers out of 35. All the participants were involved in the three focus group sessions. The findings of the study revealed that teachers have various perceptions toward the STEM professional development based on their experience, knowledge, and skills. Moreover, the study revealed different factors influencing STEM professional development among teachers including personal characteristics and internal factors including attitudes and beliefs toward STEM professional development activities, and teachers' capacity. Also, external factors such as design of the training program, availability of training material, and timing of training. The findings of the study could benefit the decision‐makers to be aware about these factors that influence professional development and the teachers' needs.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.