Elif Ozulku

Biography

Dr. Elif Ozulku is a Research Scientist at the Center for STEM Education and Managing Editor of the Journal of Research in Science Teaching. Her research focuses on instructional quality of science and mathematics teachers, teachers’ learning through teaching and professional development, and implementation of educational reforms in classrooms. She is particularly interested in how teachers interpret, adapt, and enact reform initiatives and in identifying the conditions and supports that can strengthen alignment between reform goals and classroom instruction.

Drawing on quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods approaches, Dr. Ozulku analyzes classroom videos, teacher-generated artifacts, longitudinal professional development data, and large-scale national and international datasets. Her work connects detailed analyses of classroom practice with larger-scale questions about teacher effectiveness, professional learning, instructional improvement, and policy implementation. By combining close analyses of teaching with broader investigations of teacher effectiveness and educational systems, she seeks to bridge research on policy implementation, teacher learning, and instructional practice. Her work ultimately aims to generate evidence that can inform the design of reforms and professional learning opportunities that are both ambitious and feasible in authentic classroom contexts.