AEA-Europe Council

Involved in teacher education for over two decades, he has wide experience working with primary and second-level teachers and university staff and students in the area of assessment. His research interests include reform of curriculum and assessment, digital learning, and teachers’ professional development and he has a strong track record of securing funding from government and corporate sources. He led a longitudinal project investigating the reform of curriculum and assessment in lower-secondary education in Ireland and was Principal Investigator for a study exploring options for accommodating students who are unable to present for high-stakes examinations due to illness or other unanticipated reasons. In 2022-2024 he led a team providing quality assurance to the State Examinations Commission (Ireland) in relation to the post-marking adjustments of students’ results on the secondary school Leaving Certificate Examination in the post-pandemic era.

One of his current research projects is analysing the ethical implications of using process data in assessment and developing a code of ethics to guide such use. Another project is investigating practices used internationally to externally moderate teacher-generated marks incorporated as part of high-stakes examinations in pre-university education.

Damian has held several advisory roles in relation to the development of curriculum and assessment policy and practice in Ireland, North Macedonia, Kosovo and Albania. His research is widely disseminated through books, journals, reports, and conference presentations. Recent books include ‘Understanding and Applying Assessment in Education Second Edition’ (SAGE, 2024) and ‘Curriculum Change within Policy and Practice: Reforming Second-Level Education in Ireland’ (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021). He is a frequent contributor to print and broadcast media in Ireland and is active on social media, on X @damianmurchan, LinkedIn, and ResearchGate.

Damian completed an undergraduate degree in primary teaching in St. Patrick’s College of Education, Dublin. Later, he attained Masters (Educational Psychology) and Ph.D (Educational Measurement and Research Methodology) degrees in Cornell University, New York, including extended periods of research based at Educational Testing Service Princeton, the University of California Los Angeles, and the University of Chicago.

Sebastiaan de Klerk (1986) is an educational researcher at CitoLab. CitoLab is the research and innovation division of Cito. Sebastiaan received his PhD from Twente University in 2016 for research on the design and validation of simulation-based assessment (SBA) in vocational education. In his PhD research, he focused on the measurement of procedural skills in SBA. The key element in his PhD research was to design and validate an assessment for a Dutch security profession To that extent, evidence-centered design was used for the design. In 2016, during the AEA-Europe conference on Cyprus, he was awarded the Kathleen Tattersall New Assessment Researcher Award for his work on the design and validation of SBA. Sebastiaan also worked (2017 – 2022) as the treasurer of the Dutch Association for Educational Assessment (NVE). At CitoLab, Sebastiaan’s main focus is on research on the influence of technology on assessment. Sebastiaan has multiple scientific publications and presented at numerous conferences.

Alex is Director of Research and Regulation at AQA. He is responsible for setting and maintaining standards in AQA’s qualifications, the programme of assessment research and overseeing regulatory activity.

He has previously been a Director at the UK National Audit Office, leading teams delivering evidence-based reports for Parliament on the cost-effectiveness of government programmes in health and social care, and examining the use and regulation of market mechanisms in public services. He earlier headed the NAO’s methodology and statistics team, and has published research on the nature of assessment of government performance. He has also worked at the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority and at the Associated Examining Board, where he specialised in applying quantitative methods to the examination of issues in standard setting and maintenance, and the design and awarding of national curriculum tests.

His research interests include the philosophy of measurement in education and the social sciences, the nature of validity arguments, and the application of quantitative and interdisciplinary approaches in assessment.

Deborah has been a member of the association since 2002, the association has provided her with the opportunity to network with professionals currently engaged in assessment research. She is currently Associate Professor in Science Education at the University of Malta.

She currently teaches courses in science methodology and assessment at both undergraduate and postgraduate level and have supervised a number of masters and doctoral students. Her main research interests are in the development of ‘fairer’ assessment practices in both secondary and tertiary education. She has been involved in a number of projects that focused on the assessment of students with a profile of dyslexia, assessment in multi-cultural classrooms, and the examination of doctoral candidates. Deborah was also a member of the National Science Education Strategy committee and contributed to the drafting of a consultation document that outlined a vision for science education in Malta.

Deborah has been a member of AEA-Europe for many years and attended a number of the annual conferences. She was part of the local organizing committee for the conference hosted in Malta (2008). Recently, Deborah became a council member and is responsible for chairing the Publications Committee.

I have worked for international awarding bodies for over 20 years. From 2007 to 2021, I was Head of Research at Cambridge Assessment International Education where I was particularly interested in demonstrating how educational, psychological and vocational tests seek to meet the demands of validity, reliability and fairness. Before leading a research team in the area of mainstream international examinations, I worked on a range of Cambridge English tests with specific skill responsibilities for assessing writing.

I have a wide range of publications in English second language assessment and educational research journals (including books, chapters, journal articles and conference proceedings). My assessment books include: Examining Writing: Research and practice in assessing second language writing (Shaw & Weir, 2007); The IELTS Writing Assessment Revision Project: towards a revised rating scale (Shaw & Falvey, 2008); Validity in Educational and Psychological Assessment (Newton & Shaw, 2014); Language Rich: Insights from Multilingual Schools (Shaw, Imam & Hughes, 2015) and Is Assessment Fair? (Isabel Nisbet & Stuart Shaw, 2020). I am currently working on a book with Isabel Nisbet (to be published by Routledge in 2023) entitled: Educational Assessment in a Changing World: Lessons Learned and the Path Ahead.

I am a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Educational Assessors (CIEA) and a Fellow of the Association for Educational Assessment in Europe (AEA-Europe) where I am additionally Chair of its Scientific Programme Committee. I am also an elected Member of the Board of Trustees of the International Association for Educational Assessment (IAEA). Other IAEA commitments include: Chair of the Communications Committee and Newsletter Editor. I am also an affiliated lecturer at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge.

Elena is the Dean of the School of Education at the University of Nicosia. She is a Fellow of AEA-Europe and has carried out research in the areas of assessment mainly in the context of computer adaptive testing.

She received her Ph.D. in Measurement and Quantitative Methods from Michigan State University and an Honors B.Sc. in Education from The Pennsylvania State University.

Prof. Papanastasiou is mostly interested in the areas of assessment, test development, psychometrics, and process data in the context of computer adaptive testing.

Dr. Papanastasiou also serves as the General Assembly representative of Cyprus in the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA), while in 2014 she had also been elected in the Standing Committee of the organization. In 2018 she was awarded the status of Fellow of the Association of Educational Assessment-Europe in which she currently serves as a Council Member.

After a first degree in zoology Lesley embarked upon a career in educational publishing. For 20 years she was responsible for commissioning and developing high-quality textbooks for schools across the UK. During that time she was also dissertation supervisor and assessor for postgraduate students of publishing at the University of Stirling.

Towards the end of that phase of her career Lesley went back to the University of Glasgow to undertake part-time research in measurement science. Her PhD was awarded in 2005. She continued her research at post-doctoral level and it is a field in which she is still active as an Honorary Research Fellow in the University of Glasgow’s School of Mathematics and Statistics.

In 2011 Lesley joined SQA (Scottish Qualifications Authority), working initially on vocational qualifications and then as an assessment specialist for the Curriculum for Excellence project team, working with specialists in all subjects to develop valid and reliable assessments for national qualifications at all levels. She also contributed to research into stakeholder experiences following the launch of the new assessments.

After seven years with SQA Lesley became an Associate Tutor in the School of Education at the University of Glasgow, where she contributed to the development and delivery of a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses in educational assessment and in research methods. Increasingly more involved in educational research in recent years, she contributed to projects which include: Understanding public perceptions of standards in Scottish qualifications; Developing an assessment toolkit for the Curriculum for Wales; and the Welsh Government funded Camau i’r Dyfodol project. She is now a Research Fellow in the School of Education, a member of the University of Glasgow Educational Assessment Network and a member of the International Educational Assessment Network.

In addition to her work for the University, Lesley is an external reviewer for the Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework Partnership (SCQFP). She also develops and delivers face-to-face and online Learning Outcomes and Assessment workshops for that organisation.

A member of AEA-E since 2014, Lesley became an AEA-E Accredited Assessment Practitioner in 2016 and she joined the Association’s Publications Committee in the same year. In that committee she was given the task of establishing Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and is delighted to have been elected in 2023 to the AEA-E Council with particular responsibility for AEA-E SIGs.