Assoc. Prof. Sibel Akın Sabuncu

Biography

Assoc. Prof. Dr. Sibel Akin-Sabuncu was born in Cankaya/Ankara in 1987. She graduated from the Department of Elementary Education at Hacettepe University in 2009 and was honored with Hacettepe University Student Achievement Award (as ranked 1st in the department) and Hacettepe University Ihsan Doğramacı High Achievement Award. Upon completing her undergraduate study, she pursued her integrated Ph.D. degree (Master’s & Ph.D.) in Curriculum and Instruction Program and worked as a research assistant at the Department of Educational Sciences at Middle East Technical University between 2009-2017, through which she was granted a scholarship by TUBİTAK (The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey), 2211 National Scholarship Programme for Ph.D. Students. Having completed the required course work of her integrated Ph.D. education with a GPA of 4.00/4.00, Dr. Akin-Sabuncu defended her dissertation on “Identifying Essential Qualities for Elementary Teachers of the 21st Century and Effectiveness of Elementary Teacher Education Program for Developing These Qualities” in 2017.

Dr. Akin-Sabuncu was invited by Teachers College, Columbia University to continue her studies at the Department of Curriculum and Teaching, and was honored by TUBITAK International Research Fellowship Programme to continue her studies in Newyork, USA. During her visit, she worked as a research assistant at the Office of Teacher Education and participated in “Teaching Residents at Teachers College (TR@TC1 & TR@TC2)” research projects. She also worked as a research assistant at the Office of Accreditation and Assessment and served as the coordinators of the Department of Curriculum and Teaching, and the Department of Counseling and Clinical Psychology through the conduct of "Teachers College, Columbia University Self-Study Project".

Dr. Akin-Sabuncu assisted several undergraduate-level and graduate-level courses at Middle East Technical University and Teachers College, Columbia University. Her research interests mainly center on quality pre-service teacher education, pre-service elementary teacher education, elementary teacher qualities, teacher recruitment, induction, retention, curriculum development, and curriculum evaluation. Dr. Akin-Sabuncu has presented several research studies at leading national and international conferences, participated in different national and international research projects (i.e., European Union Projects, METU-IRFs, TEDU-IRFs), and published papers (SSCI-indexed, ESCI-indexed, and other) in several peer-reviewed journals. Dr. Akin-Sabuncu was honored with Nafi Atuf Kansu Educational Sciences Best Paper Award in 2018. Between 2021-2023, she pursued her postdoctoral studies at Teachers College, Columbia University where she focused on examining and designing strong faculty-school partnerships.

Lastly, as for her personal interests, Dr. Akin-Sabuncu is a lover of jazz and blues music, plays saxophone, and dances salsa and bachata. She does pilates on a regular basis.