Keynote speakers

Professor Eckhard Klieme

Professor Eckhard Klieme is Director of the Department of Educational Quality and Evaluation (BiQua) at Leibniz Institute for Research and Information in Education (DIPF). Klieme has held the Chair of Educational Sciences at Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main since 2001. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Zeitschrift für Pädagogik, as well as a member of the Advisory Boards of several national and international journals. Eckhard Klieme served as the president of the German Association for Empirical Educational Research (AEPF) (2003-2007) and as coordinator of the EARLI Special Interest Group on Educational Effectiveness (2007-2011). His current research interests focus on educational effectiveness and quality of teaching, classroom assessment, and international comparative educational research. Since 1998, Eckhard Klieme has served on various national as well as international consortia and expert groups for PISA. He was the International Study Director for Questionnaire Development and Analytical Frameworks for PISA 2015.

Courtney Bell

Courtney Bell, Principal Research Scientist in ETS’s Global Assessment Center, completed her doctorate at Michigan State University (U.S.A.) in Curriculum, Teaching, and Educational Policy after earning her B.A. in Chemistry at Dartmouth College (U.S.A.).  A former high school science teacher and teacher educator, Courtney’s research looks across actors in the educational system to better understand the intersections of research, policy and practice.  Her studies use mixed-methods to analyze the measurement of teaching and the validity of measures of teaching quality, especially observational measures. Current and recent studies investigate how administrators learn to use a high stakes observation protocol, how raters use subject specific and general protocols, how measures of teaching compare across countries, and the ways in which observation protocols capture high quality teaching for students with special needs.  She has published in a variety of scholarly journals and also co-edited the 5th Edition of the American Educational Research Association’s Handbook of Research on Teaching.

Professor Nikolaj Elf

Nikolaj Elf is Professor in Educational Sciences focusing on disciplinary didactics at Department for the Study of Culture, University of Southern Denmark, and a visiting researcher at the National Literacy Centre, University of Stavanger. Elf is also a member of the QUINT Management Group.

Elf's main research field is Language arts/L1-education, focusing on literature, writing and technology, as well as writing in the disciplines and writing development. He is a member of the executive board of the International Association for Research in L1 Education (ARLE) and co-initiator of SIG Technology and Literacy Education within ARLE.

He is a co-editor of the journal L1 - Educational Studies in Language and Literature. Since 2017, Elf is a member of the Steering Committee of International Society for the Advancement of Writing Research (ISAWR). In 2018, he was appointed member of WAC Clearinghouse Publications Review Board.