Osnat Fellus recently completed her PhD in Education: Teaching, Learning, and Evaluation from the University of Ottawa. Her PhD work focuses on theories of identity in mathematics education and learning English as an additional language. Osnat was the Head of English for Academic Purposes at Talpiot College of Education where she was also a teacher educator teaching courses in classroom discourse, research methods, and statistics. She has recently co-authored One is Not Born a Mathematician: In Conversation with Vasily Davydov in a special issue of the International Journal for Mathematics Teaching and Learning where she discusses, together with her coauthor Dr. Yaniv Biton issues paramount to the question of teaching and learning mathematics. Osnat holds an M.Ed. in TESOL and an M.A. in Translation and Interpreting from Bar Ilan University. She can be contacted at osnat.fellus@uottawa.ca or at osnat.fellus@gmail.com
In this interview, part of the Lead the Change Series of the American Educational Research Association Educational Change Special Interest Group, Dr. Fellus talks about democratizing education and evidence as well as her views on the future of educational change research. As she puts it:
For me, educational change is a field heading toward being recognized as the central and continuing task of educational systems. What excites me about educational change now is the continual feed of new ways of teaching and learning that research produces. In the future, I believe educational systems will be structured in the form of flipped classrooms where learning takes place in the afterschool hours and knowledge is refined during school hours as students work together on problem-based projects. Ivan Illich’s vision of students coming together to work on topics that interest them (Illich, 1970) will bring education closer to the real meaning of the word curriculum, which etymologically means to run. That is, educational change in the future, as I see it, will focus on structural and organizational implications of new ways of teaching and learning where students themselves engage in bricolaging their own curriculum under the wise guidance of their teachers.
This Lead the Change interview appears as part of a series that features experts from around the globe, highlights promising research and practice, and offers expert insight on small- and large-scale educational change. Recently Lead the Change has also interviewed Kristin Kew and Thomas Hatch.
International Education News 