Orit Avidov-Ungar

My academic research revolves around two main areas: professional development as a personalized process of continuing professional learning of teachers and educators. I also update on leading processes of change in organizations with an emphasis on the difficulties and the opportunities in assimilating innovative technologies in the education system. My studies renew an observation on professional development from an organizational perspective. They create a hierarchy of the empowerment phenomenon in three concepts. I develop a new concept of personalization in the continuous learning of teachers - while observing the phenomenon from a global perspective. In the context of assimilating technology in educational systems, I conceptualized the strategy as "islands of innovation" and "general innovation". I have published more than 70 articles in refereed journals with high level impact factors and have presented more than 100 research studies at international conferences, 5 books and have supervised over 20 students guiding them through the writing of their thesis. As mentioned, my last book titled The personalized continuing professional learning of teachers: A global perspective - published by Routledge. I have also published several chapters in other books. The latest of these is titled Teachers’ professional knowledge in integrating digital games into instructions in school, published by IntechOpen. I am also a guest editor with a colleague of the Education Sciences journal of a special issue on Teacher's Professional Learning from Educational Practices. I am involved in some international projects that include research. One program is with a Dominican Republic colleague on the issue of: Innovative approaches in integrating children with special needs and social emotional learning. Another program is with academic colleagues from Germany and Catalonia known as: Cooperation Online Germany Israel Catalonia COGIC - Virtual Worlds 2022-3, on: Collaborative learning in high technology environments such as virtual worlds. One more international project is accompanied by international research, with a colleague from Colombia University, NYC, a large-scale project on research-practice partnership (RPP) between Columbia University Teachers College and the Office of Sustainability at the NYC Department of Education. The main issue is leadership and empowerment of Sustainability Coordinators in NYC. I am invited as a visiting scholar at Teachers College, Columbia University in June 2023 as part of the collaboration. In 2023 I received an invitation to be part of ‘The 5th Wandering Conference of the Israeli Forum for Academic Development’ in Singapore. T In the academic site, I was invited to collaborate with partners: NTU (Nanyang Technological University), NUS (National University of Singapore) and SIT (School for International Training) in joint research projects and grants. Over the past two years, I have received several grants of over 570,000$~ for projects that I have lead together with my colleagues in a number of competitive academic researches. The studies all deal with examining the implementation of innovative technologies for teacher training and teachers’ professional development. All the research is innovative and sheds light on new digital platforms. Some of these studies have already been presented at conferences and published in international journals. I have been appointed as a member of the Ministry of Education’s Directorate’ for the State of Israel. Furthermore, over the years I have been an academic consultant for the Ministry of Education. Recently, a literature review was published for which I was asked to be an academic advisor on the subject of Measurement, assessment and digital professional development of digital skills in education. I have held senior administrative positions in Achva Academic College, as a Dean of the Faculty of Education and Leadership that offering both B.Ed., M.A. and M.Ed. degrees in education.