Bengü Cilalı
Fulbright Scholar
Bengü Cilalı is a Turkish Fulbrighter, an educator as well as an emerging motivation researcher who is seeking ways to contribute to the quality of education that each and every learner deserves regardless of their backgrounds. To this end, she aims to explore the antecedents of need-supportive teaching styles, which will fulfill the basic psychological needs of all learners such as autonomy, relatedness, and competence in educational settings. As she is cognizant of the fact that cultivating such an environment is not likely without teachers who have a passion in their profession, she has decided to first explore what could be done to enhance teacher motivation. By collaborating with Chris Hulleman and his amazing team at Motivate Lab, she would like to contribute to the literature on motivation and mindsets and come up with practical implications for teaching and teacher education.
Bengü, who is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Curriculum and Instruction at Bilkent University in Turkey, earned her B.A. in English Language Teaching from Başkent University and her Master’s of Science degree in Educational Sciences from Middle East Technical University, where she specialized in Counseling Psychology. She has been working as a lecturer and teacher trainer at the Department of Modern Languages in Atılım University, Turkey.