After graduating she worked as an elementary school teacher and later as an inspector for the Ministry of Education.

In parallel she also embarked upon an academic career, initially in the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

In 1953, Feitelson was awarded the Israel Prize,[1] in its inaugural year, in the field of education for her work on causes of failure in first grade children.

[2] 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.