About Me.

I was once a New Zealand high school teacher of English, ESOL, and language support in social studies. In that role, I was asked to run testing programs to sort students into streams and identify new students who needed extra English. I moved into testing and assessment at the New Zealand Council for Educational Research. Then, I ran the R&D for the Assessment Tools for Teaching and Learning (asTTle) test system for 5 years. During that time, I finished a PhD on teacher conceptions of assessment (educational psychology of psychometrics). Since 2005, I've been a full-time academic at the University of Auckland and hold honorary positions at Umea University, Sweden, the Education University of Hong Kong, and Thammasat University, Thailand.

My Research Focus

Educational assessment is founded on the purpose of helping teachers and students improve their practice and learning, respectively. The quality of assessment information and processes is a sine qua non if it is to inform any decisions concerning individuals, systems, or policies. My research depends on an acute awareness of the potential for error in all assessment processes (e.g., test design, scoring, and interpretation) by all stakeholders (i.e., teachers, students, administrators, policy makers, and parents). In addition to technical and statistical approaches to assessment, awareness of psychological, social, and cultural factors within the human participants of assessment leads to a deeper understanding of factors that impinge upon the meaning of assessments. The attitudes, beliefs, values, and behaviours of humans in assessment change the value and meaning of assessment practices and policies. The challenge in educational assessment is to fulfil two competing major purposes (i.e., improvement and accountability) with their varying impact on the minds, lives, and futures of the humans being assessed. My research has shown that teacher and student beliefs are (1) contingent on assessment quality, (2) consistent with cultural values and priorities, and (3) play a significant part in explaining adaptive and maladaptive outcomes. Further, my research has shown that improvement is best achieved through high-quality assessment practices and systems that provide rich feedback to both test-users and test-takers and that this outcome is contingent on ensuring low-stakes consequences are attached to assessments.