Staff Profiles
Dr Tom Lumley
Senior Research Fellow
MA Oxford , Dip Ed LaTrobe , MA, PhD Melbourne
Dr Tom Lumley is a Senior Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research in the Assessment and Reporting research program.
In recent years Tom has played a major role in the development of the reading materials for the 2009 cycle of PISA (Programme for International Student Assessment) 2009, for the innovative electronic reading assessment (ERA) component as well as the print version of the test. He has delivered workshops on reading item development and marker training for PISA and related projects in Australia, Europe and Mexico (in both English and Spanish), as well as marker training for the Spanish writing component of the Graduate Skills Assessment (GSA) in Colombia. He is currently directing development of the reading component of an online assessment tool of literacy and numeracy for adults in New Zealand. Other projects in which he has had a major role as director or materials developer include the Program for International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC); SEPISA, a sample assessment of reading and mathematics for secondary students in Mexico, using PISA and the ISA (International Student Assessment); TORCH Plus, an extension of the widely used Tests of Reading Comprehension (TORCH); and a variety of literacy assessment programs at primary and secondary level within Australia and internationally. He has also been involved in a number of consultancies related to evaluation, review and comparison of curriculum and support materials in Australia, Chile and Hong Kong.
His research interests include the difficulty of reading test items, the development of electronic reading assessments, and written and spoken language performance assessment in academic and workplace-related contexts.
Tom’s PhD won the TOEFL Jacqueline A. Ross Award for Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation Research on Second/Foreign Language Testing, and was published in 2005 by Peter Lang under the title Assessing Second Language Writing: The Rater's Perspective. He was principal investigator for a TOEFL-funded study of test takers’ and raters’ responses to integrated reading and writing tasks. A co-author of the Language Testing Dictionary (CUP, 1999), his work has been published regularly in Language Testing and elsewhere. He is a member of the Editorial Advisory Boards of Language Testing and Assessing Writing.
Tom joined ACER in 2004 with a specialist background in second language assessment. He was Assistant Professor in the English Department at Hong Kong Polytechnic University from 1997 to 2002, where his teaching covered a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses in English, language testing & assessment and research methodology in ELT, as well as supervision of MA and PhD students in language education. He was responsible for the development, trialling and implementation of the Graduating Students’ Language Proficiency Assessment-English (GLSPA), a standardised exit test of English for university students in Hong Kong. Organisations for whom he has consulted in Hong Kong include the Hong Kong Examinations Authority, the Hong Kong Education Department and City University of Hong Kong.
Tom taught ESL and EFL in Spain and Australia before joining the Language Testing Research Centre at the University of Melbourne in 1991. There, he worked on research and development for a wide range of English language tests and assessment procedures used in primary and secondary schools and universities, in professional and workplace communication, and for immigration purposes. He has worked on standard-setting projects for the University of Melbourne, the Department of Immigration and Ethnic Affairs, the Victorian Department for Education and Training and the National Office for Overseas Skills Recognition.