She received her PhD in Special Education with a concentration in gifted Education from the University of Wollongong, Australia in 2009. Her main area of interest is identifying gifted students particularly underachieving and disabled gifted students. Planning for gifted programs as well as counseling gifted students. For her dissertation research she compared three levels of gifted achievers in terms of motivation, goal orientation, motivational goals, and attitudes in both Jordan and Australia. Recently, Dr. Hanan has published twelve research articles and one book related to psychological testing and gifted students.