Irene-Anna Diakidoy
Professor of Educational Psychology, University of Cyprus

Bio and Research Interests

Irene-Anna Diakidoy is a Professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Cyprus, specializing in learning and cognition. She is a founding member of the interdepartmental graduate program in Cognitive Systems, which is jointly run by the departments of Psychology and Computer Science. She served an elected four-year term as Vice-Rector of Academic Affairs at the University of Cyprus. In that position, she was responsible for all matters pertaining to research, innovation, and teaching. Under her initiative, the university developed and implemented several policies for research and innovation, as well as a set of codes of ethics for research, teaching, work, and study at the University of Cyprus. As she served at a state university, she was also active in promoting the legislative amendments required by many of these initiatives for the University of Cyprus Law. She has also been an active member of the Research and Innovation Strategy Group (RISG) of the European Universities Association (EUA).

Dr Diakidoy earned her PhD at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, where she worked with Richard C. Anderson. She taught at the University of South Dakota as an Assistant Professor before coming to the University of Cyprus. Her primary research area is the comprehension and learning from text, including (a) the development of expository text comprehension, (b) the influence of text structure in conceptual change learning in science, and (c) the connection between text comprehension and text-based argument evaluation. This work has focused primarily on the influence of text-related factors on reading outcomes. Her more recent work connects two separate lines of research: text comprehension and critical thinking, and their contributions to belief formation/change, learning, and decision-making. Her work has been published in high-impact journals, and she has been an invited or keynote speaker at universities and conferences internationally. She has been a long-standing member of the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction, the International Literacy Association, and the Society for Text and Discourse, and has served on journal editorial boards and as a reviewer and organizer of national and international conferences.

Head of the Observatory of Higher Education Innovations at Jacobs University, Bremen

(Germany)

J. Douglas Willms
President, The Learning Bar

Research Interest

Dr. J. Douglas Willms is a member of the US National Academy of Education, Past-President of the International Academy of Education Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. From 1995 to 2018, Dr. Willms was Professor of Education at the University of New Brunswick, where for eight years he held the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research Chair in Human Development and for fourteen years held the Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Literacy and Human Development. He is the President of The Learning Bar, an international company that provides research-based tools and training for enhancing the life chances of children and youth.

Dr. Willms has published over two hundred research articles and monographs pertaining to youth literacy, children’s health, the accountability of schooling systems, and the assessment of national reforms. He played lead roles in developing Canada’s National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY) and the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). He and his colleagues designed the Early Years Evaluation (EYE), an instrument for the direct assessment of children’s developmental skills at ages 3 to 6, and OurSchool, an evaluation system for the continuous monitoring of student engagement and well-being. Dr. Willms is the lead researcher in designing the contextual questionnaires for PISA for Development, an initiative for low- and middle-income countries aimed at tracking international educational targets in the post-2015 UN framework. His research team is also working with school leaders in 30 First Nations schools in the design and implementation of Confident Learners, a whole-school and whole-community literacy program based on the science of literacy and instructional practice.

Jacqueline P. Leighton

Bio and Research Interests

JACQUELINE P. LEIGHTON was born in Santiago, Chile and immigrated to Brazil (Rio de Janeiro) in 1975 and then to Canada (Calgary) in 1978. Leaving her homeland of Chile in 1975, two years after the coup d'etat and the start of the Pinochet dictatorship, which brought on significant human rights violations against those who spoke out against the dictatorship, instilled in her a lifelong commitment to independent, critical thinking, fundamental human rights, and specifically freedom of expression. This commitment is observed in her ongoing research interests in human development, cognition and its translation into fair educational methods and practices, inclusive of cognitive diagnostic assessment and think aloud interviews.

Professor Jari Lavonen

Professor in Physics and Chemistry Education at the University of Helsinki

Bio and Research Interests

Jari Lavonen has been researching science and technology education and teacher education for the last thirty years. His main research interests include science and technology teaching, learning and assessment; interest, motivation and engagement in learning; curriculum development; teacher education; and the use of education technology in education. He has published more than 600 publications, together with colleagues, 130 of them are refereed papers in journals, 130 refereed papers in international books. 

Jonathan D. Jansen

Bio and Research Interest

Jonathan D Jansen is Distinguished Professor of Education at Stellenbosch University and former President of the Academy of Science of South Africa as well as the South African Institute for Race Relations. He started his career as a Biology teacher in the Cape and went on to pursue studies in science education (Cornell) and international development education (Stanford). In various South African institutions he has served as Dean, Vice-Chancellor and Administrator of universities. He leads a national Future Professors Program and spends half his time researching and changing underdeveloped schools in South Africa. Much of his recent work is concentrated in curriculum theory and, in particular, the politics of knowledge.

Judith Kalman

Bio and Research Interests

Dr. Judith Kalman has been a Research Professor in Departamento de Investigaciones Educativas (Department of Educational Research-DIE for its Spanish initials) at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies of the National Polytechnic Institute (Centro de Investigación y Estudios Avannzados del IPN-CINVESTAV) since 1993.

She earned a Bachelor’s degree in Spanish Language and Literatures from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM), a Master’s degree in Educational Research from CINVESTAV, and a Ph.D. in Education, specializing in Language and Literacy, from the Graduate School of Education at the University of California, Berkeley. From 1997 to 1999, she was a postdoctoral fellow of the National Academy of Education (USA) and the Spencer Foundation.

She has been a member of the Mexican Academy of Sciences since 2004. In 2002, she received the International Literacy Research Award, a biennial prize awarded by UNESCO. In November 2015, she was appointed Honorary Professor at the National University of the Northeast (Universidad Nacional del Nordeste), Argentina. In March 2019, she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate (Doctor Honoris Causa) by the National University of Córdoba, Argentina.She is currently an Emeritus Researcher of Mexico’s National System of Researchers.

A specialist in the social construction of written language, she currently directs the Laboratory of Education, Technology, and Society at the DIE, where she and her group study the incorporation and use of digital technologies in educational contexts and learning situations. She also researches their use in the social world and their relationship to communicative practices.

During the pandemic, she participated in a project in the Youth and Adult Literacy and Basic Education Program in Villa María, Argentina, which abruptly shifted from a face-to-face program to an emergency remote one mediated by digital technologies. Her current work includes The Appropriation of Digital Technologies in a Marginalized Community in Mexico City, which analyzes the use of digital technologies, reading, and writing in everyday situations within a marginalized context. Also she is studying the El Juego Letrado: producción multimodal de jóvenes en el contexto de la Guerra Civil Española (Literate Games: Multimodal Production by Young People in the Context of the Spanish Civil War), which analyzes a large corpus of literary writings, maps, and drawings produced in 1939 in the context of war and the exile of a family forced to leave their country. Although the topics, spaces, times, and actors are diverse, the conceptualization built around the notion of written culture, social practice, and concepts from sociolinguistics provides theoretical and methodological coherence to this research agenda.

Selected publications

Kalman, J. (2022). We don’t vaccinate foreigners: Promoting critical literacy through understanding disputed meanings in official documents. Journal for Critical Education Policy Studies. VOL 20 (1), pp. 224- 248. ISSN 1740-2743

Tapia, E. Reyes, I. & Kalman, J. (2023). Children’s literacy funds of knowledge in an urban Mexican elementary school: changing the approach. Literacy. 2023, 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1111/lit.12332

Kalman, J., Valdivia, P. & Miranda, M. (2023)  “Don’t Tell Them What You Told Me” Negotiating Paperwork in Mexico City. Written Communications, 1-35 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1177/07410883231169518   *Best article Award 2023-2024 from Written Communication 

Kalman, J. &  Lorenzatti, M del C. (2024) Solidarity, agency, and learning in everyday participation. : A look at an adult education program in the context of COVID-19. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy. 2024. 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1002/jaal.1334 

Kalman, J. & López Rendón, C. (2024) Jugar, leer y escribir mientras las bombas caen. Creación literaria de un grupo de jóvenes durante la guerra civil española. Boletín de la Institución Libre de Enseñanza. Diciembre 2023, (131- 132). 111-132. 

Kalman, J. & Chartier, R. (2025). Los tiempos de la alfabetización. (Multi)Alfabetización: palabras democráticas desde la biblioteca pública. Secretaría Distrital de Cultura, Recreación y Deporte- Red Distrital de Bibliotecas. ISBN 978-628-7589-31-5

Valdivia, P. & Kalman, J. (2025) Intergenerational Appropriation of Technologies in the Context of Collaborative Writing Activities in Mexico. In Family and intergenerational literacy and learning. UNESCO, 2025. ISBN: 978-92-820-1259-8

Capítulos

Kalman, J., Valdivia, P., & Rendón, V. (2020). Examining Qualitative Data Using Spreadsheets: Constructing Analytical Narratives Around Talk, Action, and Practice. En Knobel, M., Kalman, J, Lankshear, C. Data Analysis, Interpretation, and Theory in Literacy Studies Research: A How-To. Myers Education Press, p. 240 ISBN: 97-1-9755-0212-6.

Kalman, J. y Lorenzatti, M. (2022). Leer del mundo: enseñar y aprender con jóvenes y adultos en COVID 19. En Ocampo, A. (Ed.) Educación Lectora y justicia social. Decolonialidad, políticas de la diferencia e infancias críticas. Universidad Católica de Chile. pp. 274- 297. ISBN: 978-956-386-048-1.

Rendón, Víctor y Kalman, Judith (2021). La clase al revés: una forma distinta de organizar las actividades en el aula. Ornelas, C., Yáñez, G., Sánchez, L. (coord.) Arrojos contra el vendaval. Universidad Autónoma de Tamaulipas- Colofón. pp. 95- 106. ISBN: 978-607-8750-53-5.

Kalman, J., Méndez- Arreola, R., Valdivia, P. (2023). Conceptualizing Everyday Writing. En Horowitz, R. (Ed.) The Routledge International Handbook of Research on Writing. Routledge. ISBN 9781138345256.

Libros

Kalman, J. & Brian V. Street (Coord.) (2013) Literacy and numeracy in Latin America. Local Perspectives and Beyond. Routledge, Taylor & Francis Group, New York and London. 226 pp. ISBN-978-0-415-89609-2 (hbk), ISBN-978-0-415-89610-8 (pbk), ISBN-978-0-203-80779-8 (ebk).

Knobel, M. & Kalman, J. (Eds). (2016). New Literacies and Teacher Learning. Professional Development and the Digital Turn. Vol. 74 Serie: New literacies and digital epistemologies. ISBN 978-1-4331-2912-4 (hardcover), 978-1-4331-2911-7 (paperback), 978-1-4539-1823-4 (e-book). New York: Peter Lang. 260pp.

Kalman, J. (2018) Leer y escribir en el mundo social. Obras escogidas de Judith Kalman. México: Paideia Latinoamericana 5. ISBN 978-607-9286-23-1. 298 pp. Tiraje: 500 ejemplares. Centro de Cooperación Regional para la Educación de Adultos en América Latina y el Caribe (CREFAL).

Knobel, M., Kalman, J., Lankshear, C. (2020) Data Analysis, Interpretation, and Theory in Literacy Studies Research: A How-To. Myers Education Press. 240 pp.  ISBN: 97-1-9755-0212-6.

Kalman, J. & Street, B. (2022, 2009). La lectura, la escritura y las matemáticas como prácticas sociales.  Open Access por el Writing across the curriculum Clearinghouse, State University of Colorado. https://wac.colostate.edu/books/international/la/sociales/

Kalman, J. & Valdivia, P. (2026). A scribe, a photographer, and a vendor Digitaliteracy practices in a working class neighborhood in Mexico City. Writing across the curriculum Clearinghouse, State University of Colorado. (Forthcoming). https://wac.colostate.edu/books/international/la/sociales/

Prof. Dr. Drs. Jürgen Baumert
Director and Professor for Education

Research Interest

Large-scale assessment (TIMSS and PISA), learning and instruction in mathematics, teacher expertise, longitudinal studies on development in childhood and adolescence, and institutions as differential learning environments.

Professor and Director of Cross-cultural Assessment and Research Methods in Education (CARME)

AREAS OF RESEARCH INTEREST
Educational measurement and research methods in education
Cross-cultural and language issues in measurement
Validity of assessment and research generalizations

SELECTED POSITIONS
Member, International Test Commission Council (2012 - )
Member, Board of Directors of the National Council on Measurement in Education (2008-2011)
Member of the US National Academy of Sciences Committee on Foundations of Assessment (1998-2001)
Associate of the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies (2000 – present)

Karen Mundy

Bio and Research Interests

Karen Mundy is a Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto.  Professor Mundy’s award-winning research is focused on the work of international organizations and transnational actors in education, and on educational reform and educational leadership in the global south.  She has served as President of the Comparative Education Society (2014-2015) and as Chief Technical Officer of the Global Partnership for Education (2014-2018).   She was a member of the UNESCO International Commission on the Futures of Education which prepared the report “Re-imagining our futures together: Towards a new social contract for education”. Her early career was spent as a teacher, researcher and consultant in East and Southern Africa.