Patrick Griffin

Patrick Griffin holds the Chair of Education (Assessment) at the University of Melbourne and is Director of the Assessment Research Centre. He is the Associate Dean in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. He has published widely on assessment and evaluation topics that include competency development, language proficiency, industrial literacy, school literacy and numeracy, professional standards and online assessment and calibration.

Professor Griffin was awarded the John Smythe medal for excellence in research for his work on profiling literacy development and his work on profile reporting was identified in the annual 1996 yearbook of the American Society for Curriculum Development in Washington as world's best practice. He is a project team leader for UNESCO in southern Africa and was awarded, in 2005, a UNESCO Research Medal by the Ministers of Education from southern African nations. Professor Griffin is a World Bank consultant in Vietnam, leading national and international teams in studies of literacy and numeracy, and has lead the development of a competency framework for Vietnam’s 380,000 primary teachers teacher assessment that has been signed into law by the Vietnam Government. He has also addressed major professional associations, and taught and conducted assessment and evaluation research projects in more than 20 countries.

Professor Griffin is a fellow of the International Academy of Education. His work focuses on the application of item response modelling in interpretive frameworks for criterion referenced performance and the development of professional standards for classroom teachers and educational managers in Australia, Vietnam and China. He is currently working with the Victoria state Education Department on the development of an Abilities Index for funding students with additional needs and also leads the state-wide evaluation of Netbooks, the development of the e5 instructional model and the Leadership Development Framework, the development of literacy and numeracy exit standards or school leavers. He leads large ARC funded studies to investigate professional learning team roles in developing literacy and numeracy; the community effects in early childhood education participation and its impact on later life; and the impact of Technology on the delivery of problem solving task; the measurement of enabling skill for students with learning difficulties which has led to the emergence of a large scale online testing and reporting system. Professor Griffin is also leading the state government’s evaluation of Regional Networks and their influence on Blueprint Priority actions. He is a member of the National Expert Advisory group for the NAPLAN tests and sits on a Ministerial advisory committee for Student Wellbeing.

Internationally, Professor Griffin has led several World Bank projects in Vietnam on Primary, Lower secondary and Higher Education. In Hong Kong he has led the Government evaluation of Native English Speaking teachers in Hong Kong primary and secondary schools. In Mainland China he is a professorial fellow of the East China Normal University and advises the China project on the development of teacher competencies. He is currently the executive Director of the Assessment and Teaching of 21st Century Skills project – a multiyear, multi country Public – Private – Academy Partnership project sponsored by Cisco, Intel and Microsoft.