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Abstract: The main purpose of the present study was to gain insights into effective teaching in higher education as a phenomenon. Using professional experiences of university faculty, we wanted to develop a conceptual framework in order to enhance the pedagogical and theoretical foundations of teaching.using phenomenography, which is one of the qualitative strategies we interviewed 12 Faculty from University of Kurdistan. Participants were selected using typical sampling until we research theoretical saturation while conducting deep and semi-structured interview.  Using inductive procedure, we coded the data in three steps of open, axial, and pattern coding. The finding showed that effective teaching had four main dimensions according to participating faculty: (1) Communicative skills, (2) learner and instructor characteristics, (3) pedagogical skills, and (4) background factors. Comparing the existing literature, we argue that learner characteristics and background factors are new ideas in effective teaching.
 

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The present study is part of a bigger research project and its purpose was to investigate the influencing factors on integrating professional learning of secondary mathematics teachers with the ways in which they analyze, interpret and make decisions regarding their teaching. For the fine-grained analysis of the first layer of data, phenomenography method was used. Nine teachers were interviewed and based on the three main categories of “the presence of mathematics teachers’ educators as leading teachers’ groups”, “being familiar with various teaching methods and modify them according to personal characteristics of teacher, school and classroom” and “professional training of the cooperative group form” that were emerged in the bigger study. With the further analysis of the interviews, three sub- categories were shaped as well. They included “focusing on the specific goals and content in cooperative groups”, “considering mathematics teachers as adult learners not school students” and “the existence of common concerns between group members.
 

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Geometry is for a long time regarded as one of the main area for learning proof; while students face many difficulties in learning geometric proof. It even happens very often that students by drawing a geometric figure, no longer see the need to prove the properties of that class of geometric objects. This study has been done by the aim of describing middle school students' performance and perceptions during understanding and doing geometric proof for gaining a more detailed cognition of gradual processes and complexities in the learning geometric proof.  
The research has been conducted by phenomenography method and analyzing task-based interviews on 53 middle school students. This report describes students’ performance and their challenges during constructing a geometric proof in more detail.