Patrick Griffin


Patrick Griffin
Emeritus Professor

Bio and Research Interest

Patrick Griffin held the Chair of Education (Assessment) and directed the Assessment Research Centre for more than 25 years. He was the Associate Dean of the Melbourne Graduate School of Education.  He is one of six Australians Fellows of the International Academy of Education. He was a psychometric project team leader for UNESCO in southern Africa, and was awarded, in 2005, a UNESCO Research Medal by the Assembly of Ministers of Education from Southern African nations. He developed a system of teacher assessment signed into law by the Vietnam Government and applied to more than 380,000 teachers. He has led the development of leadership frameworks for the Australia Institute of Teaching and School Leadership.  His work continues to focus on item response modelling applications to performance assessment with a formative focus. He was the executive director of the Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills Project is the lead editor of the ATC21S series.  Volume 1 was published in 2012; Volume 2 in 2014 and  Volume 3 is in progress for release in 2017. He is currently redeveloping that work with UNESCO to develop a global framework for a curriculum transition to future competencies. In 2014 his work in linking assessment to teaching was published as ‘Assessment for Teaching’ by Cambridge University Press. 

Read more...

Reinhard Pekrun


Reinhard Pekrun
University Professor and LMU Research Chair
Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich (LMU)

Bio and Research Interest

Reinhard Pekrun holds the Chair for Personality and Educational Psychology at the University of Munich. His research areas include achievement emotion and motivation, personality development, and educational assessment. He pioneered research on emotions in education and originated the Control-Value Theory of Achievement Emotions. Pekrun is a highly cited researcher (see most cited authors, Web of Science, Essential Science Indicators) who has authored 21 books and more than 200 articles and chapters, including numerous publications in top journals such as Psychological Science, Journal of Experimental Psychology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Journal of Educational Psychology, Child Development, and Emotion. Pekrun is a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association, of the International Academy of Education, and of the Association for Psychological Science. He is a member of the editorial boards of leading journals such as Journal of Educational Psychology and Contemporary Educational Psychology. He also served as President of the Stress and Anxiety Research Society, Dean of the Faculty for Psychology and Education at the University of Regensburg, and Vice-President for Research at the University of Munich. In an advisory capacity, Pekrun is active in policy development and implementation in education. 

Read more...

Richard J. Shavelson


Richard J. Shavelson
Emeritus Professor

Bio and Research Interest

Shavelson is the Margaret Jacks Professor of Education (Emeritus), Professor of Psychology (Emeritus), I. James Quillen Dean of the Graduate School of Education (Emeritus) and Senior Fellow in the Woods Institute for the Environment (Emeritus) at Stanford University. His research spans basic psychometric research to measurement of learning, affect and performance to policy. The work includes accountability in higher education (assessment of undergraduates’ learning and college value added), assessment of science achievement, enhancement of women’s and minorities’ performance in organic chemistry, and the role of mental models of climate change on sustainability decisions and behavior.  Other work includes studies of the impact of computer cognitive training on working memory, fluid intelligence and science achievement.

Read more...

Roger Säljö


Roger Säljö
Professor, University of Gothenberg

Bio and Research Interest

Roger Säljö is a professor at the University of Gothenberg (Sweden).  Since 2006 he has served as the Director of the Linnaeus Centre for Research on Learning, Interaction and Mediated Communication in Contemporary Society (LinCS), a national center of excellence funded by the Swedish Research Council. In recent years, he has worked extensively with issues that concern how the so-called new technologies transform human learning practices inside and outside formal schooling. In this field, he has been responsible for the national research program, LearnIT, funded by the Knowledge Foundation.  He is is one of the founding editors of the journal Learning, Culture and Social Interaction. 

Read more...

Servaas van der Berg


Servaas van der Berg
Professor (National Research Foundation Chair in Social Policy) at Stellenbosch University (South Africa)

Bio and Research Interest

He joined the Department of Economics at University of Stellenbosch in 1982, currently holding the rank of Professor of Economics. He teaches courses in Poverty and Distribution, Development Economics, and Economics of Education.  During his career he has served as a consultant for numerous national and international organizations and agencies, including the World Bank, UNICEF, United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), Development Bank of Southern Africa, the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC), and the Institute for Policy Analysis (AIPA).  He also has worked collaboratively on a number of economic and educational projects.  His most recent project is called “Binding Constraints in Education,” and is a multi-part study financed by the Project to Support Pro-Poor Policy Development, a partnership project between the South African Presidency and the European Union. This multifaceted project is investigating all facets of the school education system to assist in identifying the major constraints to improved learning in schools.  His research interests include economic development, poverty, income distribution, and social policy.

Read more...

Stella Vosniadou


Stella Vosniadou
Strategic Professor 

Bio and Research Interest

Stella Vosniadou is currently a Strategic Professor at Flinders University in South Australia and an Emeritus Professor in the Department of Philosophy and History of Science at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. Her research interests are in the areas of learning, cognitive development and conceptual change in the learning of science and mathematics. She has more than 150 publications including authored and edited books, articles in refereed journal and edited volumes and over 14,000 citations. She is well known internationally for her research for which she received the 2011 Distinguished International Contributions to Child Development Award by the Society for Research in Child Development.

Read more...

Sylvia Schmelkes


Sylvia Schmelkes

Bio and Research Interest

Sylvia Schmelkes is a Mexican sociologist and education researcher who currently is serving as the director of the Mexican National Institute of Educational Evaluation (INEE).  She studied sociology at the Ibero-American University in Mexico City and obtained a Master's degree in Education Research by the same institution.  She is best known for her work in intercultural education and her book Toward Better Quality of our Schools. She has written more than 100 academic texts and essays. She is a former General Coordinator of Intercultural and Bilingual Education at the Secretariat of Public Education in Mexico.  In 2008 she received the Comenius Medal from UNESCO for her career as a researcher. Other awards include Ibero-American University’s Tlamatini award in 2003 and the Maria Lavalle Urbina award in 1998.  Her research interests include intercultural bilingual education, values, education and adult learning.  

Read more...

Tina Seidel


Tina Seidel

Friedl Schöller Endowed Chair of Teaching and Learning Research
Technische Universität München

Bio and Research Interest

After studying psychology at the University of Regensburg and Vanderbilt University (Nashville, Tennessee), Professor Seidel was awarded a doctorate at the Institute for Science and Mathematics Education (IPN) in Kiel in 2002. She was appointed to the position of junior professor of teaching research in 2003. Prior to assuming the position of professor at TUM, she was a visiting professor at Stanford University (2005-2006) and held the Chair of Educational Psychology at the University of Jena (2007-2009). Professor Seidel is a member of the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction and the American Educational Research Association. She has been a member of the Research Committee of the German University Rectors’ Conference since 2009.

Read more...

Ulrich Teichler


Ulrich Teichler
Professor, International Centre for Higher Education Research (INCHER-Kassel),
University of Kassel (Germany) from 1978 to 2013

Bio and Research Interest

Ulrich Teichler was for 35 years professor on higher education at the International Centre for Higher Education Research (INCHER Kassel) and at the Department of Social Sciences, University of Kassel (Germany), and he was about half the period Director of the Centre. Already as a student (at the Free University of Berlin), he became member (from 1965 to 1978) member of the Max Planck Institute for Educational Research in Berlin, when he also submitted his doctoral dissertation to the University of Bremen. His research activities and publications focused on higher education and the world of work, systems of higher education in comparative perspective, international mobility and cooperation in higher education, the academic profession as well as the situation of higher education research. He analyzed the search of higher education to strike a balance between accepting societal expectations and playing a proactive, “unexpected” role for society. For example, he emphasized that logics of national higher education systems varied more substantially that widespread assumptions on global trends suggest, he undertook many research projects funded by “political” and governmental agencies. He spent extended periods of research in Japan, the U.S. and the Netherlands, he was guest lecturer or visiting professor in ten countries, and his academic activities brought him to more than 80 countries. More than 500 publications each were written by him in German and in English, and more than 200 articles were published into 20 other languages. He was the founder in 1988 of the internationally most active association of researchers in his area of expertise, i.e. the Consortium of Higher Education Researchers (CHER).

Read more...

William H. Schubert


William H. Schubert
Professor Emeritus of Curriculum & Instruction, University of Illinois at Chicago

Research Interest

William H. Schubert retired in 2011 from the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) where he was a faculty member since 1975. Before his university work he was an elementary school teacher in Downers Grove, Illinois from 1967-1975. Schubert received his Bachelor’s Degree from Manchester College, a Master of Science in Philosophy of Education from Indiana University, and a Ph.D. in Curriculum Studies from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. During his 36 years at UIC, he held positions of Chair of the Department of Curriculum & Instruction, Director of Graduate Studies, Coordinator of the Ph.D. Program in Curriculum Studies, Coordinator of the M.Ed. in Educational Studies, among others. At UIC, Schubert received the College of Education Distinguished Scholar-Teacher Award, the University Excellence in Teaching Award, the University Graduate Mentoring Award, and the Alumni Association Teaching Excellence Award. He has published 17 books, 200 articles and chapters, several poems, has made over 250 presentations at scholarly and professional organizations, chaired over 60 Ph.D. dissertations and served on committees for over 100 others. In 2005, he was designated as a University Scholar at UIC. Schubert’s primary scholarly interests are curriculum history, theory, inquiry, and development in both school and non-school contexts. In this work he developed ideas such as the synoptic curriculum text, the speculative essay, curriculum genealogies, teacher lore, and fictionalized autobiographies in curriculum studies. During the past decade he has focused especially on education that has emerged in resistance to forces of conquest and colonialism (past and present) in the United States and in diverse countries and cultures. Additionally, based on his interest in teacher lore and in the biographical and autobiographical work of professors of education, he is also writing stories of educational experience as a window to theory and praxis.

Read more...