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Christopher DeLuca
Associate Dean, School of Graduate Studies
Professor of Educational Assessment, Faculty of Education
Queen’s University, Canada
Dr. Christopher DeLuca is a Professor of Classroom Assessment in Faculty of Education, Queen’s University (Kingston, Canada), and Director of the Queen’s Assessment and Evaluation Group. He currently also serves as an Associate Dean in the School of Graduate Studies and Postdoctoral Affairs. Before joining Queen’s in 2012, Dr. DeLuca was an Assistant Professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa, USA, and previously worked in the area of policy research at the Association of Commonwealth Universities in London, England.
Dr. DeLuca’s research examines the complex intersection of curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment as working within the current context of school accountability and standards-based education. His work focuses on supporting teachers in negotiating these critical areas of practice to enhance student learning experiences. In particular, Dr. DeLuca’s research centers on how pre-service and in-service teachers learn to assess in relation to the evolving accountability culture in today’s classrooms.
Dr. DeLuca’s research has been published in national and international journals and has been recognized through several awards including, most recently, the 2023 American Educational Research Association Outstanding Paper in Classroom Assessment Award and the R.W. Jackson Award from the Canadian Society for the Study of Education. Dr. DeLuca has served as the Chair of the AERA Classroom Assessment Special Interest Group and President of the Canadian Educational Researchers’ Association. He is currently an Executive Editor of the journal, Assessment in Education: Principals, Policy & Practice.
Keynote Address: Assessment Innovations: From Challenge to Change
This talk focusses on systemic assessment challenges that teachers face in their classroom practice and how teachers have navigated these challenges to engage in innovative assessment actions. Specifically, the five assessment challenges explored in this address will be:
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Leveraging assessment to overcome persisting inequities for diverse learners,
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Overcoming the grading obsession to promote a learning culture among students and parents.
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Balancing the conflicting values inherent in classroom versus large-scale assessment,
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Integrating meaningful rather than surface technology advances, and
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Prioritizing learner-centred versus accountability-driven assessment to combat reporting overload.
To overcome these challenges, teachers engage in classroom-based assessment innovations. In this talk, a definition for assessment innovation will be presented alongside a model to help teachers move assessment challenges into assessment innovations. Fundamentally, the model encourages teachers to be agentic in their assessment actions to foster changes in their classroom practice.