Dina Feitelson

Dina Feitelson-Schur דינה פייטלסון-שור
Born	1926 Vienna, Austria
Died	1992 (aged 65–66) Israel
Occupation	educator
Ethnicity	Jewish
Citizenship	Israeli
Notable award(s)	Israel Prize (1953)

Dina Feitelson (Hebrew: דינה פייטלסון‎), also known as Dina Feitelson-Schur (Hebrew: דינה פייטלסון-שור‎) (born 1926; died 1992), was an Israeli educator and scholar in the field of reading acquisition.

Biography

Feitelson was born in 1926 in Vienna, and emigrated to Mandate Palestine in 1934. She suffered a severe injury in Israel's War of Independence. She worked as a teacher, as an inspector for the Ministry of Education, and in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Then, in 1973, she accepted a post at the University of Haifa, where she continued to work till her death in 1992.

Awards and honours

In 1953, Feitelson was awarded the Israel Prize, in its inaugural year, in the field of education for her work on causes of failure in first grade children. She was the first woman to receive this prize, and also the youngest recipient ever (she was aged 27).

Shortly before her death, Feitelson was inducted to the International Reading Association's Reading Hall of Fame.^{[citation needed]}

In 1997, the International Reading Association established the Dina Feitelson Research Award, to honour the memory of Dina Feitelson by recognizing an outstanding empirical study published in English in a referred journal. The work should report on one or more aspects of literacy acquisition, such as phonemic awareness, the alphabetic principle, bilingualism, or cross-cultural studies of beginning reading.

Publications

• Feitelson, Dina (1988). Facts and Fads in Beginning Reading: A Cross-Language Perspective. Norwood, New Jersey, United States: Ablex. ISBN 0-89391-507-6. 

Further reading

• Joseph Shimron, ed (1996). Literacy and Education: Essays in Memory of Dina Feitelson. Kresskill, New Jersey, United States: Hampton Press Inc. ISBN 1-57273-033-1. 

See also

• List of Israel Prize recipients
• List of Austrian Jews

External links

• Research Prize by the International Reading Association in honour of Dina Feitelson
• Judges Rationale for Award of Israel Prize (in Hebrew) on University of Haifa Faculty website