This is a very exciting time for me as we move into the evaluations of three York University programs.  All three are funded by the Ontario Ministry of Citizenship and Immigration.    I will be blogging more on these education and training programs in  the near future.

We are also continuing our engagements by professional organizations and corporations for training/education and credential testing.  Our work has been met with much positive feedback from the clientele. Each corporate testing or educational testing project is unique in terms of needs, but the general processes involved are very similar. Test development is a process that adheres to the same guidelines and best practices in many contexts.

I will be delving into some exciting professional development in the near future.  First, I will be attending the National Council on Measurement for Education (NCME) conference that is part of the larger American Educational Researchers Association (AERA) conference in Denver.  My focus there will be on some of the more psychometric topics, such as test equating.  There is a demand for expertise in this area especially among the corporate clientele.  Next, I will be co-presenting a paper at a special symposium at the Canadian Society for Studies in Education (CSSE) conference in Montreal.  The symposium will be part of the Canadian Educational Researchers Association (CERA) conference program, and will deal specifically with the work we did for the Ontario Ministry of Education’s Literacy and Numeracy Secretariat (LNS) on the evaluation of the Collaborative Inquiry for Learning – Mathematics teachers’ professional learning program.  It will be an honour to present with the LNS research staff and the external research leads Dr. Cathy Bruce of Trent University and Dr. John Ross of OISE/UofT.  A tremendous amount of gratitude goes to Dr. Barnabas Emenogu, a senior researcher at the LNS, for taking the lead with our proposals.

Finally, it is very gratifying to know that our work helps make a difference for organizations.  One of our corporate clients is using our work, experience and expertise to guide their improvement planning and implementation for a national testing program in the credentialing domain.  While the data collection, analyses and report-writing are completed, we look forward to a continued relationship with this organization as they implement change.  With a national entity comprised of some 40,000 members, organizational change does not come easily.  But the leadership of this organization is focused, determined and willing to learn.  It has been a pleasure working with them.