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A Principled Approach to Language Assessment: Considerations for the U.S. Foreign Service Institute (2020)

Chapter: Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. A Principled Approach to Language Assessment: Considerations for the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25748.
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Appendix

Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff

Dorry M. Kenyon (Chair) is senior fellow for assessment at the Center for Applied Linguistics (CAL) and acting director of CAL’s collaborative assessment activities with WIDA, a consortium of state departments of education dedicated to supporting English-language learners in K–12 contexts. He also serves as chair of the five-member expert panel of the U.S. Defense Language Testing and Assessment Project. His work over 30 years has covered all aspects of designing, developing, validating, and operationalizing second and foreign language assessments through many large projects at state, national, and international levels. Previously, he taught German and English as a foreign or second language in the United States and abroad. He has a B.A. in German and economics from Bowdoin College, an M.T.S. in theology from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, an M.A. in teaching English as a foreign language from the American University in Cairo, and a Ph.D. in measurement, applied statistics, and evaluation from the University of Maryland.

David Dorsey is vice president and director of the Business Development Division at the Human Resources Research Organization, with more than 25 years of experience as a human capital consultant, researcher, and manager. Previously, he worked in the U.S. government in the area of defense and intelligence and as a vice president at Personnel Decisions Research Institutes. His research and development work has been in the areas of assessing critical skills in national security settings (e.g., cyber, foreign language), understanding adaptive performance, innovating performance management, using modeling and simulation technologies for learning,

Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. A Principled Approach to Language Assessment: Considerations for the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25748.
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understanding career paths, and building corporate-level data science platforms and communities. He is the recipient of two major research awards and an award for being a top leader in government. He is an elected fellow of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (Division 14 of the American Psychological Association). He has a B.A. in psychology, an M.A. in industrial/organizational psychology, and a Ph.D. in industrial/organizational psychology, all from the University of South Florida.

Stuart W. Elliott (Study Director) is a scholar in the Division of Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Previously at the National Academies, as the director of the Board on Testing and Assessment, he led numerous studies on educational tests and indicators, assessment of science and 21st-century skills, applications of information technology, and occupational preparation and certification. He recently spent 3 years at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) working with PIAAC, the OECD’s test of adult skills, resulting in a 2017 report, Computers and the Future of Skill Demand. He has a B.A. in economics from Columbia University and a Ph.D. in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and he received postdoctoral training in cognitive psychology at Carnegie Mellon University.

Judith Koenig (Senior Program Officer) is on the staff of the Committee on National Statistics of the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, where she directs measurement-related studies designed to inform education policy. Her work has included studies on the National Assessment of Educational Progress; teacher licensure and advanced-level certification; inclusion of special-needs students and English-language learners in assessment programs; setting standards for the National Assessment of Adult Literacy; assessing 21st-century skills; and using value-added methods for evaluating schools and teachers. Previously, she worked at the Association of American Medical Colleges and as a special education teacher and diagnostician. She has a B.A. in elementary and special education from Michigan State University, an M.A. in psychology from George Mason University, and a Ph.D. in educational measurement, statistics, and evaluation from the University of Maryland.

Lorena Llosa is associate professor of education in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University. Her research focuses on second language teaching, learning, and assessment. Her work has addressed standards-based classroom assessments of language proficiency, assessment of academic writing, placement testing of U.S.-educated language minority students in community colleges, and the

Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. A Principled Approach to Language Assessment: Considerations for the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25748.
×

integration of language and content in instruction and assessment. Her research has appeared in a wide range of scholarly journals on all aspects of language testing and measurement, and she is associate editor of the American Educational Research Journal. She currently serves on the Committee of Examiners of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) at the Educational Testing Service. She has a B.A. in English and Spanish from Santa Clara University, an M.A. in teaching English as a second language from the University of California, Los Angeles, and a Ph.D. in applied linguistics with a specialization in language testing from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Robert J. Mislevy is Frederic M. Lord chair in measurement and statistics at the Educational Testing Service. His research interests center on applying recent developments in technology, statistical methodology, and cognitive research to practical problems in educational assessment and has covered Bayesian networks in educational assessment, Bayesian psychometric modeling, and the sociocognitive foundations of educational measurement. He is a recipient of the Lindquist Award for career contributions from the American Educational Research Association, the Samuel J. Messick Memorial Lecture Award from the International Language Testing Association, and a Career Contributions Award and four annual awards for technical contributions from the National Council on Measurement in Education. He served on the U.S. Defense Language Testing Advisory Panel, and he was a primary author of the final report of the National Assessment Governing Board’s design feasibility team. He has a B.S. and an M.S. in mathematics from Northern Illinois University and a Ph.D. in research methodology from the University of Chicago.

Natalie Nielsen (Consultant) is an independent research and evaluation consultant whose work focuses on improving opportunities and outcomes for young people. Previously, she worked at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, first as a senior program officer for the Board on Science Education and then as the acting director of the Board on Testing and Assessment. She also previously served as the director of research at the Business-Higher Education Forum and as a senior researcher at SRI International. She has a B.S. in geology from the University of California, Davis, an M.S. in geological sciences from San Diego State University, and a Ph.D. in education from George Mason University.

Lia Plakans is a professor of education in foreign language and English as a second language at the University of Iowa and departmental executive officer for the university’s Department of Teaching and Learning in the College of Education. Her research focuses on second language learning

Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. A Principled Approach to Language Assessment: Considerations for the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25748.
×

with particular emphasis on language assessment and literacy. Her work has explored assessments that integrate language skills, such as reading-into-writing tasks, to understand the underlying processes elicited, as well as the nature and scoring of performances that require integration. She is an associate editor for Language Assessment Quarterly, and she chairs the Committee of Examiners of the TOEFL at the Educational Testing Service. She has a B.A. in anthropology and psychology from the University of Iowa, an M.A. in teaching English as a second language/applied linguistics from Iowa State University, and a Ph.D. in foreign languages/English as a second language education from the University of Iowa.

James E. Purpura is professor of linguistics and education at Teachers College at Columbia University. His research interests include the assessment of second and foreign language grammar and pragmatics; second and foreign language test validation; and learning-oriented and scenario-based assessment in classroom and large-scale standardized assessment contexts. He currently serves on the expert panel of the U.S. Defense Language Testing and Assessment Project, and he is an expert member of the European Association of Language Testing and Assessment. He is coeditor of Language Assessment Quarterly and coeditor of two book series devoted to language assessment. He has served as president of the International Language Testing Association, on the Committee of Examiners for the TOEFL at the Educational Testing Service, and as a language testing consultant for numerous foreign countries. He has a B.A. in French language and literature from Marietta College, an M.A. in French linguistics from the University of Colorado, Boulder, and a Ph.D. in applied linguistics from the University of California, Los Angeles.

M. “Elvis” Wagner is associate professor of teaching English to speakers of other languages (TESOL) at Temple University. His research focuses on second language assessment, especially the assessment of second language listening ability, and it is informed by broad teaching experience in many different contexts, including as a Peace Corps volunteer in Poland. He has written and published widely on issues related to foreign and second-language teaching methodology, as well as teaching and testing of second language listening and oral communicative competence. He is a recipient of the award for best article in language testing by the International Language Testing Association for “Video Listening Tests: What Are They Measuring?,” which appeared in Language Assessment Quarterly. He has a B.A. in English, Spanish, and history from Texas Christian University, an M.A. in English from the University of Nebraska, and an M.A. and an M.Ed. in TESOL and an Ed.D. in applied linguistics from Teachers College, Columbia University.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. A Principled Approach to Language Assessment: Considerations for the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25748.
×

Paula M. Winke is an associate professor of second language studies (SLS) at Michigan State University and codirector of the university’s SLS Eye-tracking Lab. She teaches assessment for classroom and research purposes and individual differences in second language acquisition. Previously, she was a German instructor at the University of Minnesota and a test development manager at CAL in Washington, D.C. She also served as a Peace Corps volunteer in China and a Fulbright English-language instructor in Hungary. She is a past president of the Midwest Association of Language Testers, and she is a recipient of the distinguished researcher award of the TESOL International Association and the Article of the Year Award of the Computer-Assisted Language Instruction Consortium. She is editor of Language Testing. She has a B.A. in French and philosophy from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, an M.A. in linguistics from the University of Minnesota, and a Ph.D. in applied linguistics from Georgetown University.

Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. A Principled Approach to Language Assessment: Considerations for the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25748.
×

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Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. A Principled Approach to Language Assessment: Considerations for the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25748.
×
Page 95
Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. A Principled Approach to Language Assessment: Considerations for the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25748.
×
Page 96
Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. A Principled Approach to Language Assessment: Considerations for the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25748.
×
Page 97
Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. A Principled Approach to Language Assessment: Considerations for the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25748.
×
Page 98
Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. A Principled Approach to Language Assessment: Considerations for the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25748.
×
Page 99
Suggested Citation:"Appendix: Biographical Sketches of Committee Members and Staff." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2020. A Principled Approach to Language Assessment: Considerations for the U.S. Foreign Service Institute. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/25748.
×
Page 100
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The United States is formally represented around the world by approximately 14,000 Foreign Service officers and other personnel in the U.S. Department of State. Roughly one-third of them are required to be proficient in the local languages of the countries to which they are posted. To achieve this language proficiency for its staff, the State Department's Foreign Service Institute (FSI) provides intensive language instruction and assesses the proficiency of personnel before they are posted to a foreign country. The requirement for language proficiency is established in law and is incorporated in personnel decisions related to job placement, promotion, retention, and pay.

A Principled Approach to Language Assessment: Considerations for the U.S. Foreign Service Institute evaluates the different approaches that exist to assess foreign language proficiency that FSI could potentially use. This report considers the key assessment approaches in the research literature that are appropriate for language testing, including, but not limited to, assessments that use task-based or performance-based approaches, adaptive online test administration, and portfolios.

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