Dr Yasemin Kalender

Personal Statement

Dr. Z. Yasemin Kalender is a Lecturer and physics education researcher. Her overarching research interests are in studying diversity issues in the physics discipline, investigating motivational characteristics of students, and incorporating mixed methods and big data analysis techniques into the area of physics education research. Dr. Kalender received her Ph.D. from the University of Pittsburgh. After earning her Ph.D., she continued her academic work as a postdoctoral research associate at Cornell University. She was an Active Learning Initiative fellow at Cornell, where she investigated the inquiry-based physics lab courses and their impact on students’ motivational factors across different demographic groups. Before coming to Liverpool, Dr. Kalender worked as an Assistant Professor at the Rochester Institute of Technology and as an Assistant Director of Science Pedagogy at Harvard University supporting STEM teaching and learning at all levels. Her current research projects focus on student motivation, equity and diversity in physics at all levels, group work in lectures and lab courses, sense of agency in hands-on learning spaces, and graduate teaching assistants’ views and teacher identities.