Miray Tekkumru-Kisa is a policy researcher at RAND and a professor at the Pardee RAND Graduate School. Two interrelated foci of Tekkumru-Kisa’s research are understanding and supporting professional learning and measuring and improving instructional quality for ambitious and equitable teaching in STEM. Her research efforts involve working in partnership with stakeholders across layers of the education system (e.g., schools, districts, and states) for building the capacity for continuous improvement.
She has led and contributed to federally funded projects involving careful design of educational interventions that address problems of practice and help to extend theories of teaching and learning. Her work uses video clips of instruction to support teachers develop a vision of ambitious teaching and learn to notice teaching in interaction with student thinking. For example, as the principal investigator of the current National Science Foundation-funded project, in collaboration with colleagues across several institutions, she investigates the mechanisms of teacher learning with and from video clips of the implementation of complex science assessments within the context of a professional development to promote ambitious and asset-based teaching in science classrooms. Her work has been published in peer-reviewed journals including American Educational Research Journal, Educational Researcher, and Journal of Research in Science Teaching.
Prior to RAND, she worked as an associate professor of science education at Florida State University. Before moving to the United States for her Ph.D. studies at the University of Pittsburgh’s Learning Research and Development Center, she was involved in national and international education improvement projects in Turkey.
Ph.D. in learning sciences and policy, University of Pittsburgh; M.S. in science and mathematics education, Bogazici University; B.S. in science and mathematics education, Bogazici University
