Res. Asst. GÖZDE ÖZENÇ İRA

Biography

Gözde Özenç-Ira has been working as a research assistant in primary school teaching at Hacettepe University since 2018. In 2017, she completed her MSc in primary school teaching at Kocaeli University. Since 2017, she has been pursuing her PhD in primary school teaching at Anadolu University. In her dissertation, which is almost finished, she developed a 10-session music-integrated program in the Life Science course and investigated how the music integration strategies can be utilized in the Life Science course and their impact on the attitudes toward teaching and learning and emotional development among primary school-aged children. Since 2001, she has enrolled in several music education courses, focusing on playing instruments (classical/acoustic guitar, bağlama/saz), music theory, music, culture, and pedagogy, as well as special music teaching approaches (e.g. Orff, rhythm, and body percussion). From 2014 to 2016, she also worked as a primary school teacher in public schools. In this regard, she has found an opportunity for practicing her theoretical knowledge in real classroom settings. Her academic interests are two-fold: interdisciplinary education/arts-integrated curriculum, and inclusive education. She shows a very strong commitment to addressing the challenges of providing inclusive education, especially for the disadvantaged group of Syrian refugee children and university students. Her academic works have focused on the cross-cultural educational needs of displaced individuals and the perspectives of teachers toward these vulnerable individuals. She has been a researcher in the Project "Strengthening Higher Education Institutions for Inclusive Education" which has been conducted in the collaboration with Hacettepe University and SPARK (Dutch non-governmental organization) in the date range of 01.07.2020 - 01.01.2021. She has also published several academic works in some international high-ranked journals in the research categories of social care, psychology, educational psychology, and education and educational research.