Ali Soken has earned my BS in Computer Education and Educational Technology in 2010, and MA in Primary Science Education at 2014 from Bogazici University, Turkey. Through his undergraduate and graduate studies, he has acquired a broad vision about the cognitive processes of learning and how human intellectual development can be facilitated through the design, development, implementation, and evaluation of learning environments. During his undergraduate degree, he participated in a volunteer meeting of I?LKYAR (Education Funds for Elementary Schools) and became aware of their activities. ILKYAR organizes one-day visits to regional primary boarding schools and conducts activities in different areas such as drama, astronomy, physics, math, and literature. ILKYAR donates hundreds of book to the school library and gives a science journal to students, to increase their curiosity and motivation to learn. He has decided to pursue a Ph.D. degree in education after his experience as a volunteer. His observation with the kids from rural areas of Turkey was the main factor in his academic career in education to increase teachers’ pedagogical knowledge to support those kids who are the building block of the future. He feels himself so close to those kids because he was born in a farmer family and had financial problems throughout his academic life. He believes that having a high-quality education is the only way for students with disadvantageous like so he tries to contribute the life of students from marginalized groups.
After getting his BS degree and parallel to his master program, he worked in an e-learning company as an instructional designer. His responsibilities were developing scenarios of educational software to meet corporate e-learning needs, developing design specifications, and evaluating instructional multimedia. With all these valuable experiences, he was hired as a project specialist in a non-governmental organization called Educational Volunteers Foundation of Turkey (TEGV- http://tegv.org/eng/) in 2011. As a project specialist, he was responsible for the projects called Math, Science and me, Lego Robot, Dream Workshop, Well-being Education, and Drama Workshop. His job definition incorporated organizing volunteer training programs, providing learning materials for activities, monitoring and checking the quality of activities from different places, preparing annual budgets of each project and submitting the proposal for new projects. Preparing the programs for children cooperating with the academicians and providing related training for the adult volunteers gives him the chance to observe the whole process.
Currently, he is a 2nd year Ph.D. student in Math, Science, and Learning Technologies program. Last year, he was a research assistant in project RAISE with Michael Krezmien to develop science curriculum materials for students in justice juvenile system. This experience helped him to contribute a project in special education, and develop teacher professional development materials to enhance inquiry-based learning. This academic year, he is working with his advisor Professor Florence Sullivan in a robotic project aims to facilitate students problem-solving skills via programming and designing. He is also working as a teaching assistant in EDUC 325 Introduction to Special Education for this academic year. His research interests are technology integration in science education, media education and informal learning. He wants to increase science teachers’ technological knowledge to promote inquiry-based science learning. This integration is possible by implementing Universal Design for Learning in which advice to increase the accessibility of the materials for learners with different needs. Moreover, teachers and students need to develop a critical media literacy skill to access, analyze, evaluate online information and make well-informed decisions especially nowadays. Personally, he also believes that informal learning is the plausible way to promote life-long learning experiences for students so he wants to create chances for teachers and students to pursue their own interests.
Ideally, his main purpose is to be a professor in a university to support teachers’ pedagogical knowledge that helps the learners to become life-long learners. He knows teaching is challenging and teachers may be a role model for students, thus he wants to encourage his future students (teacher candidates) to be an expert in their field and inspire the kids in their classroom especially students from marginalized groups in terms of religion, gender, race or income. He believes that it is directly related to his personal experience and his observation during his voluntary work. In the long run, he wants to establish a non-governmental organization to provide informal learning opportunities for students from low-socioeconomic families. He strongly believes that education is the key to social justice and creating more inclusive and democratic societies. Therefore, it is his duty to expand his subject knowledge as an educator to support both teachers and students in the future.