Director
Sandra Milligan
03 9035 7801 Find an ExpertSandra Milligan is Director and Enterprise Professor with the Assessment Research Centre at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, University of Melbourne. Sandra’s current research interests focus on assessment, micro-credentialing and warranting of hard-to-assess learning.
Her most recent research examined how ‘big data’ and developmental assessment approaches can be used on digital learning platforms, to support assessment of higher-order learning skills such as ‘21st Century skills’, or learning skills. Originally trained as a teacher of science and mathematics, she is also a former Director of Curriculum in an Australian state education department, and has held senior research, management and governance positions in a range of educational organisations, including government agencies, not-for-profits, small start-up businesses and large, listed, international corporations. She was co-founder of The Good Universities Guide series, and has a background in technology commercialisation in education. She is the Convenor of a Melbourne University MOOC targeting professional learning for teachers in the area of assessment and teaching of 21C skills, which has to date has enrolled over 30,000 teachers worldwide.
Jayne Johnston
03 8344 4926 jayne.johnston@unimelb.edu.au Find an Expert
Acting Deputy Director, Melbourne Enterprise Fellow
Jayne's current research and development interests include the assessment and recognition of complex competencies, supporting schools and systems to understand and use developmental assessment tools to support teaching and personalise learning and explorations of alternate designs for credentialing student work at graduation.
Jayne has had over 20 years’ experience in senior executive positions in public education departments in WA, ACT and SA with roles including curriculum and assessment design, leadership development and the design of improvement and accountability systems. Prior to joining the ARC, Jayne was Deputy Chief Executive in the South Australian Department of Education and Child Development, responsible for leading preschool and school improvement in over 900 sites across the state. She was a board member of the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority and served on a number of national and state level working parties. Jayne began her career as a secondary mathematics teacher in WA where she led the development of the First Steps in Mathematics teaching and learning resources and was founding director of the WA Professional Learning Institute.
Therese Hopfenbeck
therese.hopfenbeck@unimelb.edu.au
Professor of Assessment
Therese Hopfenbeck is former Director of the Oxford University Centre for Educational Assessment and fellow at Kellogg College. She is the elected Vice-President of The Association for Educational Assessment-Europe and Lead Editor of the journal Assessment in Education, Principle, Policy and Practice. Dr Hopfenbeck’s research agenda focuses upon bridging research on self-regulation and classroom-based assessment and making sense of international large-scale studies in education. In collaboration with Professor Nancy Perry, University of British Columbia, she is currently leading an international network of researchers disseminating classroom-based research, funded by Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (2020 – 2022). She is also currently Principal Investigator for two research projects funded by IB, on critical thinking in PYP schools internationally and evaluation of education reforms in Kent, UK (2020 – 2022). In 2020, she led the research on Critical Thinking in the Diploma Program in Australia, England and Norway (https://ibo.org/research/outcomes-research/diploma-studies/critical-thinking-skills-of-dp-students/). Dr Hopfenbeck was Principal Investigator for the PISA 2022 study in England, Northern Ireland and Wales, in collaboration with Pearson UK (2018 – 2023). She was the Research Manager of PIRLS 2016, funded by The Department of Education, UK.gov, and Principal Investigator of a major ESRC-DFID research study, Assessment for Learning in Africa (ES/N010515/1) (2016 – 2019). Since coming to Oxford in 2012, she has been the recipient of funding from ESRC-DFID, OECD, The Norwegian Research Council, Education Endowment Foundation, State Examinations Commissions Ireland, Jacob Foundation and the International Baccalaureate totalling more than £2 mill in addition to a single grant of £4 mill in collaboration with SLATE: Centre for the Science of Learning & Technology at the University of Bergen, Norway. Prior to her appointment at Oxford, she worked as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Oslo’s research group for Measurement and Evaluation of Student Achievement at the Unit for Quantitative Analysis of Education (2010 – 2011). She is Adjunct Professor of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), member of the Visiting Panel for Research at the Educational Testing Service (ETS) in Princeton, expert member of the PISA 2022 Questionnaire Framework group, appointed by ETS and OECD (2014 – 2023). She has advised on the implementation of formative assessment programs in India, South Africa, Norway and the Emirates and carried out policy work for UNESCO/OECD and the Norwegian Ministry of Education Norway.