Biography

Dr. Kotluk is currently a post-doc at the EPFL. He focuses mainly on emotions in the decision-making process, moral reasoning, and ethics in Engineering Education. He also works on equality and diversity issues. He has an academic background in both STEM and social sciences.

Dr. Kotluk has acquired advanced skills in education, inclusive pedagogy, and science teachers' training. He has 14 years of teaching experience and has trained high school students in physics and teachers in pedagogy and research methods, among others. He holds a Ph.D. in Educational Science, Curriculum, and Instruction. In his thesis, he studied the perceptions and practices of educators in culturally relevant pedagogy and developed recommendations to emphasize inclusion in pre-service teacher education. With his research, he opened a new discussion in the academic community in Turkey and internationally.

His recent work analyzes the educational challenges facing refugee communities and other marginalized groups. In the study, he focused on whether and how teachers implemented the principles of culturally relevant and sustaining pedagogies and the challenges teachers faced while implementing these principles with Syrian students in Turkey.

More recently, in a project led by Dr. Siara Isaac (https://people.epfl.ch/siara.isaac?lang=en)- at the EPFL, the research team focused on how micro-ethics issues shape the exclusion process within engineering project teams, identifying strategies to address bias and discrimination.

In his current research project, he has studied moral emotions, moral reasoning in engineering ethics, and equality and diversity issues in engineering education. 

His teaching and research interests include emotions in engineering education, moral emotions in engineering ethics education, culturally responsive STEM education, equity and diversity in education, and multicultural education.