Zelha was born to a family of teachers. She graduated from Middle East Technical University in 2000, received M.S. degree from Indiana University in 2002 and PhD degree in Mathematics Education from University of Georgia in 2008. For her post-doctoral studies, she worked in an interdisciplinary project for teaching fractions with computational tools in the most prestigious computer schools in the world, Carnegie Mellon University. After offering undergraduate and graduate courses at the University of Pittsburgh, she taught one full year high school mathematics in Ä°stanbul. Later, she worked as a faculty member at Yeditepe University and directed research projects on school-university partnerships. In 2013 she conducted research and taught graduate courses at the University of Pittsburgh. Since 2014, she has been working as the Chair of the Department and teaching middle school mathematics at a public school. She is leading the pioneering research team in Turkey, namely MEF Mathematics Teacher Education Team that develops teacher training models through partnership between Education Faculties and K-12 Schools. She also holds the position of Associate Dean for the Faculty of Education at MEF University.Research Interests: Constructivism, children's mathematical thinking, fractional knowledge, pre- and in-service teacher education, action research, university-school partnerships, flipped classroom methods.

Mathematics