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Our People

Peter Knapp

Director

BA (Hons), Communications, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
PhD, Communications, University of Technology, Sydney, Australia
MEd, Educational Assessment and Measurement, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia

Peter has worked in curriculum and assessment for the past twenty years. His special interest is in literacy and in particular teaching and assessing student writing. He has written many books and teaching resources on literacy and assessment, his most recent ‘Genre-Text-Grammar: Technologies for Teaching and Assessing Writing’ was published by UNSW Press in 2005.

Peter began working at EAA in 1998 providing consultancy on writing assessments. In 2000 he was appointed as head of EAA’s English team where he developed the ICAS: Writing program. In 2001 he was appointed Research and Assessment Manager, in 2002 Director, Research and Assessment and in 2004 he became Director of EAA.

As part of his work, Peter spends a lot of time traveling to countries that participate in the ICAS program. One of his key interests is in finding ways of reporting student and school academic achievement that provide the key stakeholders with accessible and valid data. He is particularly interested in the potential for modern test theory to provide information on individual student progress over their years of schooling. His current research interest is in developing effective online assessments for reading and writing.

Robert Schulz

Deputy Director

Chief Technical and Operating Officer

Robert Schulz is Deputy Director at Educational Assessment Australia (EAA) with responsibility for Operations, Data Analysis and IT.

Robert joined EAA in June 2004 as Chief Technical Officer and helped transform EAA into an efficient provider of educational assessment products through his innovative integration of IT into data analysis and operations processes.

Prior to EAA, Robert had 10 years experience in the software industry with assignments in Australia, New Zealand, the USA, Canada, Germany and India.

Robert holds a Masters Degree in Computer Science and Operations Research from the University of Mannheim, Germany and during the degree spent time at the University of Waterloo, Canada and the University of Newcastle, Australia. Robert also holds an Executive MBA from the Australian Graduate School of Management where he was awarded the Dean’s Prize for Outstanding Performance.

Robert is most happy when he is free to focus on programming computer code. And that goes for when he is at work, as well.

Michelle O’Dowd

Senior Manager, Executive and External Relations

Michelle is responsible for the customer relations area which includes working with schools and parents. She is responsible for the implementation of the Total Assessment Partnership (TAP) and the TAP consultants who provide support to schools. She is a member of the Marketing Team and is always interested in hearing how things can be improved for clients.

Michelle has a Bachelor of Education and a Masters of English, Literacy and Drama. She is an experienced teacher who has worked as an Assistant Principal, literacy consultant, university lecturer and as the project manager on various large scale projects with the Department of Education and Training for over 16 years.

Michelle brings her experience as a teacher and consultant to her position in customer relations with the aim of maintaining and enhancing an already high level of satisfaction with the International Competitions and Assessments for Schools (ICAS).

Michelle enjoys spending time with friends and family and entertaining her two year old.

Penny Hutton

Assessment Manager

Penny is in charge of the development of effective and high quality tests in English, Writing and Spelling for EAA, and brings to her role a wealth of experience in teaching, educational policy development, and literacy testing.

Penny has a Bachelor of Education. Her career highlights include the development of educational policies to improve teaching and learning in the middle years of school, and the management of large-scale, full cohort literacy testing programs for NSW Department of Education and Training (including ELLA and BST Reading, Language and Writing). She has also written widely-published sets of support material for teachers aimed at enabling educators to recognise the specific literacy demands of their disciplines and make these explicit to students.

Penny is currently undertaking research in the early acquisition of literacy skills and enjoys “using my six grandsons as an excuse to buy great children’s literature!”

Nick Connolly

Assessment Project Officer - Mathematics

Nick is responsible for the design of mathematics assessments at EAA and also manages a team of external item writers and reviewers.

Nick brings to his role a particular interest in Rasch measurement, psychometrics and taxonomies of mathematics along with 20 years of experience in the field of mathematics education.

Nick has a degree in Pure Mathematics from the University of Hull, a degree in philosophy (University of London), plus a post graduate certificate in Education, and has taught mathematics in Britain and South East Asia.

Nick is currently researching language issues in the design of mathematics items and developing a glossary of school level mathematics. He has two children and lives in the Blue Mountains.

Janelle Ho

Acting Senior Head of Literacy

Janelle is responsible for much of the test construction for ICAS – Spelling and ICAS – Writing. She also works with Penny Hutton on the test construction of ICAS – English.

Janelle has worked in the field of English education for the past 14 years. She was previously the subject head of English within the Gifted Education Department in Raffles Institution, the leading boys’ school in Singapore, and has also managed education and training for adult international learners through her role as Studies Manager in a private vocational training college in Sydney. She has written a number of recently published papers on the subject of spelling education.

Janelle holds a Master of Education with a major in Teaching Second Languages and received a Dean’s Commendation. She has co-authored a series of spelling workbooks for K-6 titled Spelling Rules! (Macmillan Education Australia, published in 2006).

Janelle is particularly interested in the curiosities of spelling ability and the possible effect of curriculum on writing performance. She enjoys watching English premier league football.

Dr Teo Saw Choo

Assessment Project Officer - International

Saw Choo designs and reviews the assessments for the international projects at EAA. She writes language items for the ICAS-English papers and examines the content of Maths, Science and Computer Skills papers to check that the content and language are culturally appropriate for use in overseas locations.

Saw Choo holds a B.A.(Hons); Dip.Ed., M.A. and a PhD in Linguistics from the University of Sydney. Her areas of expertise include testing and training in the field of literacy and TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) for children and adults. She has been a high school teacher in English (and other languages) and a lecturer in Sociolinguistics and Applied Linguistics at both Macquarie University and the University of Sydney.

Saw Choo has published fiction for speakers of English as a second language through the University of Oxford press and has recently completed volume 3 in a series of 5 reference books on English grammar.

Saw Choo has a keen interest in the observation and analysis of bilingual development in infants and children and has excellent subjects in her 4 tri-lingual grandchildren!

Kerry Tremaine

Assessment Project Officer - Special Projects

Kerry is primarily responsible for the test construction of ICAS – Computer Skills, AFLA (Australian Financial Literacy Assessment) and coordinating the test construction for the ACT Assessment Program (ACTAP).

Kerry has been involved as both a group leader and marker in large scale marking operations for state-wide assessments in NSW, including ELLA, BST Writing, the School Certificate and the Higher School Certificate. She taught for 12 years at St Ignatius’ College in Sydney.

Kerry has a particular interest in boys’ education and the teaching of literacy and numeracy through Social Science subjects. She is the manager of the ‘Under-10s Cubs’ T-Ball team.

Linda Gillies

Assessment Project Officer - Special Projects

Linda is in charge of Special Projects. She is primarily responsible for the test construction of ICAS – Computer Skills, AFLA (Australian Financial Literacy Assessment) and coordinating the test construction for the ACT Assessment Program (ACTAP).

Linda’s areas of expertise are in English education, ESL (English as a Second Language) and Special Education. She has taught in secondary schools in Australia and the Philippines and has worked with the NSW Board of Studies in curriculum development and assessment. Linda was a member of the syllabus committee that wrote the course content for LOTE 2-unit Filipino for the Higher School Certificate, and was chair of the HSC Filipino examination committee from 1997-2003.

Linda holds a Master of Education from the University of Sydney. She has an active involvement in Philippine community affairs, especially in relation to education issues. Through the Education Committee of the Ethnic Communities Council of NSW, Linda was instrumental in a successful submission to the NSW Minister of Education for the teaching of 2-unit Filipino in the Saturday School of Community Languages. In 1999, the first group of students were accepted at Bankstown SSCL and classes have run successfully since then.

Sofia Kesidou

Assessment Project Officer - Science

BS (Hons), Physics, Aristotle University, Greece
PhD, Science Education, University of Kiel, Germany

Sofia manages the test construction for the International Competitions and Assessments for Schools (ICAS) Science and other science assessments at EAA. She joined EAA in 2007.

Sofia was previously a Program Director with the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Project 2061 in the US where she managed the development of learning progressions and curriculum resources to support the development of goals-based curriculum materials in science. She contributed to the development of national science standards in the US in the 1990s and designed professional development resources targeted at the implementation of standards documents. Prior to that she taught graduate courses in science education at the University of Pittsburgh, US and developed hands-on and computer-based units in lower secondary science.

Sofia's research interests include assessment of student understanding in science and curriculum evaluation. She received the 2003 Journal of Research in Science Teaching Distinguished Paper Award for her research on US science textbooks.

Nathaniel Lewis

Data Analysis Manager

Nathaniel is EAA’s Data Analysis Manager. He works with a team of analysts and programmers to create new ways of presenting and interpreting assessment results. His work is instrumental in the ongoing improvement of the ICAS suite of products and the diagnostic benefits they provide for teachers, parents and students. He also consults on measurement and statistical processes for government and commercial clients in the field of educational and competency testing.

Nathaniel has a Masters of Education and is currently completing a Doctorate at UNSW with a focus on computer adaptive testing, diagnostic reporting & prognostics for teaching strategy. The results of this research will drive the development of tools that allow students' cognitive learning processes and assessment results to be made more accessible to students and teachers. Nathaniel describes his career highlights as ‘working alongside and being mentored by leaders in the field of Educational Measurement in both Australia and the US.’

Nathaniel has a particular interest in de-mystifying the statistics surrounding modern test theories and enjoys fishing, motorcycle touring and travel.

Dr Goran Lazendic

Research Officer

Goran Lazendic conducts research in Psychometrics – a field of Statistics concerned with theories and methods of educational and psychological measurement.

Goran has a B.A. (Hons) from the University of Novi Sad, Serbia and a PhD in Psychology from UNSW, Australia. In his PhD research he examined how knowledge about relationships between objects is stored in the brain. He has lectured in Statistics at UNSW.

Goran’s current research interest is Item Response Theory and statistical data modelling. In particular, he is investigating how advances in modern measurement theory and Psychometrics could be utilized to improve test construction and results interpretation in the field of educational assessment.

Goran enjoys good Sci-Fi books, comics, movies, and all things Sci-Fi in general.

Huong Doran

Data Analysis Officer

Huong’s responsibilities include analysing large data sets and elucidating the results for clients and colleagues. She works alongside the Data Analysis Manager to generate reports, apply Item Response Theory and conduct research into various aspects of educational assessment. She is also the Senior Editor of EAA's online newsletter, Assessment Foundations which is a resource for teachers into the many facets of learning and assessment.

Huong has a Masters degree in Organisational Psychology and brings her research, analytical skills and business acumen to the role. She is currently researching the prevalence and usability of computer adaptive testing in an educational context, and is particularly interested in its impact on diagnosis and achievement.

Huong enjoys sampling the culinary delights of the inner city, watching the cricket with her husband and reading a multitude of books to her daughter.

EAA Customer Service Unit

The EAA Customer Service Unit are (from left to right): Tegan Arbery, Susie Redfern (Manager), Andreana Johnson, Dolores Majanggil and Sally Au.