Christine Doe - awarded ILTA student travel award

Christine Doe has been selected as one of two recipients of the ILTA student travel award for her doctoral work. The award covers travel expenses for the 33rd Language Testing Research Colloquium, held at the University of Michigan in June 2011. She has also received a travel award to attend CSSE 2011 in Fredericton. Congratulations, Christine! [5/2011]

Teacher-Librarians being removed from school budgets

Dr. Don Klinger's research with the People for Education on the role of teacher-librarians and the changing nature of school libraries in Canada was featured in The Globe and Mail, and on a broadcast of The Link on RCI. [5/2011]

Christine Doe - awarded TOEFL grant

Christine Doe has been awarded a US$2,000 grant in support of doctoral dissertation from the TOEFL Grants and Awards Committee at the Educational Testing Service. Congratulations, Christine! [1/2011]

AEA365: Michelle Searle on the Role of the Arts in Evaluation

Michelle Searle has contributed a piece to AEA365, which is a tip-a-day blog hosted by the American Evaluation Association. Her dissertation work is focused on using arts-informed inquiry as a tool in program evaluation. Read her post here! [12/2010]

CALA symposium
On 28 May 2010, a new association, Canadian Association of Language Assessment/Association canadienne pour l’évaluation du langage (CALA/ACEL), hosted a colloquium at CSSE 2010 in Montréal. Dr. Liying Cheng made a presentation at the colloquium, entitled "The impact of the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test on L2 students and classroom assessment training in teacher education." On 31 May 2010, at the Canadian Education Researchers' Association (CERA) annual general meeting, CALA officially became a special interest group of CERA.

QUISCA
On 6-8 May 2010, the AEG hosted the Queen's University International Symposium on Classroom Assessment, under the theme "Preparing Teachers for Roles and Challenges in Assessment: An International Investigation." We welcomed faculty members from universities in New Zealand, Australia, and Scotland. Pictures and papers from QUISCA will be available soon!

Postdoctoral student: Jia Li
AEG is happy to welcome Dr. Jia Li as a postdoctoral student for the 2009-2010 academic year. She will be mentored by Dr. Liying Cheng, and her research, entitled “Vocabulary assessment and intervention for secondary school English language learners in Canadian urban schools”, explores innovative assessments to measure the breadth, depth, and types of ELLs’ academic vocabulary knowledge and develops a research-based intervention oriented to benefit lower socioeconomic contexts commonly found in urban city centres. More details on Jia's research can be found here.