KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Professor Baird has played leading roles in major reviews of qualifications in Wales, Scotland, and England. She holds a PhD in Educational Assessment and has also served as President of the Association for Educational Assessment-Europe, as well as Director (Dean) of the Department of Education at the University of Oxford.

She currently serves as Co-Editor of the Oxford Review of Education, one of the field’s premier journals, and is a Standing Advisor to the UK Parliament’s Education Select Committee. A former member of the influential Assessment Reform Group, Professor Baird has helped shape global policy on formative assessment. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences and holds an Honorary Doctorate from the University of Bergen.

Her recent research explores assessment standards, the resilience of qualification systems, international tests, policy dynamics, and the paradigms that frame educational assessment.

Dr Glanville holds a doctorate and began his professional life as a mathematics teacher in the United Kingdom. He later led research teams for regional and vocational skills agencies and held key positions at the Qualifications and Curriculum Development Agency (QCDA) and Ofqual, the regulator of qualifications in England.

Since joining the IB over nine years ago, Dr Glanville has contributed to assessment innovation and strategic reviews, including the reform of 16–19 education pathways. His interests span broader educational issues, and he is recognised for promoting high-quality, equitable, and forward-looking assessment practices within global education systems.

Findings reveal that, for constructed-response items, response time is a more valid indicator of test-taking effort, resulting in fewer response misclassifications than the number of actions or a combined indicator based on both response time and actions. When comparing three threshold identification methods – Change in Information (ChInf), Normative Thresholds 10% (NT10), and NT15 – ChInf often failed to produce unambiguous thresholds, while NT10 yielded more favorable validity results on multiple-choice items and NT15 performed slightly better for constructed-response items.

Individual, family and school-level predictors were examined across 11 countries in PISA. Test performance consistently predicted effort at both the student and school levels. Socioeconomic status and enjoyment of reading were negatively associated with effort in some countries after accounting for demographic, motivational, and school-related factors. Males generally exhibited lower effort than females. Language spoken at home, test difficulty, school type, and disruptive student behavior were inconsistent predictors across nations.

Addressing test-taking effort in international low-stakes large-scale assessments requires valid measures and context-specific interventions. More refined indicators, can help assess changes in effort across test items and identify item features that influence test-taking behavior. Implementable measurement indicators, such as response time effort, can be applied in real-time to increase engagement, especially in low-stakes assessments where low effort can harm test validity. Understanding how individual and school-level characteristics influence examinee effort can guide targeted, culturally responsive interventions to promote higher engagement in low-stakes assessments.

Her research interests include motivation, effort, and engagement in assessments and surveys, as well as individual, contextual, and item-level factors influencing test-taking behavior. She has experience working with large-scale international databases and process data, and her work was presented at national and international academic conferences and published in peer-reviewed journals. In November 2024, she was awarded a competitive postdoctoral fellowship from the Cyprus Research and Innovation Foundation (Restart program, 2025–2027) to investigate innovative multiple-choice item formats and their impact on student engagement and performance.

Professor Randall holds a Bachelor’s degree (1996) and a Master’s degree (1999) from Duke University, and earned her PhD from Emory University in 2007. She began her career as a public high school social studies teacher, working with racially and ethnically minoritized students. These early experiences catalysed her critical examination of assessment practices and their impact on equity in education.

Her scholarship seeks to disrupt white supremacist logics embedded in traditional assessment by advancing practices that are explicitly and unapologetically antiracist. Professor Randall’s work centres the sociocultural identities of learners—not as an afterthought, but as a foundational principle in the design and implementation of assessments. She continues to collaborate with minoritized communities and allies to reimagine assessment systems that are equitable, inclusive, and justice-driven.