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About Dr Lawrence Ingvarson AM

Dr Lawrence Ingvarson, AM, BSc, DipEd UWA, DipEd, MA London, PhD Monash, FACE was a Principal Research Fellow at the Australian Council for Educational Research. He was also formerly a Director of Research at ACER and an associate professor at Monash University. He began his career as a science and mathematics teacher, teaching in WA, Scotland and England before undertaking further studies in psychology at the University of London.
He is a Fellow of the Australian College of Educators and a recipient of the Distinguished Service Award from the Australian Science Teachers Association (2001). In 2014 he was awarded the James Darling Medal for outstanding and sustained contribution to education by the Australian College of Educators, and was appointed as a Member (AM) of the Order of Australia in 2022. He has been a Visiting Professor at the University of East Anglia (1978), Stanford University (1988) and Michigan State University (1998).
Dr Ingvarson is internationally recognised for his research on teacher education, professional development, teacher quality, teaching and leadership standards, assessment of teacher performance, performance pay, school improvement and the evaluation of educational programs and has published widely in these areas. He has worked extensively in Australia, New Zealand, the UK and the USA on reforms related to teacher education, professional development, the quality of teaching and teacher career structures. He has been a consultant to the OECD on several projects, and to Ministries of Education in Chile, China, Jordan, New Zealand and Scotland.
He has played a major role in the development of teaching and principal standards in Australia, working in collaboration, for example, with the Australian Science Teachers Association, the Victorian Institute of Teaching, the NSW Institute of Teachers, Teaching Australia and the Principals Australia Institute. He was a member of the Ministerial Advisory Committees for the Victorian Institute of Teaching (2000-2001) and for the TAFE Development Centre (2002-2003), and a member of the Advisory Council for the National Institute for Quality Teaching and School Leadership.
With Steve Dinham and Elizabeth Kleinhenz, he developed a National Standards Framework for the Teaching Profession for the Ministerial Council for Employment, Education, Early Childhood Development and Youth Affairs. The same team also produced a report on teacher quality for the Business Council of Australia titled Teaching Talent: The Best Teachers for Australian Schools.
From 2003 to 2012, he was co-director of the Teacher Education and Development Study in Mathematics (TEDS-M) for the International Association Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). TEDS-M was managed jointly by ACER and Michigan State University. TEDS-M compared the ways in which seventeen countries prepared teachers of mathematics as well as the knowledge these future teachers had of mathematics and how to teach it. ACER was responsible for conducting the analysis of these large data international data sets and for preparing reports, including tables and charts based on these analyses.
He has directed many research and evaluation studies commissioned by the Australian Government, state governments and a range of national agencies, including the Business Council of Australia. Projects include the development of teaching standards in Australia, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. He has also provided consultancy services on teaching standards and teacher evaluation in Brazil, Chile, New Zealand and Scotland, and on teacher quality for the OECD.
With ACER colleagues, he completed a report on teacher education research commissioned by the Australian Government Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group, as part of its review of teacher education in Australia. Authored books include Research on Performance Pay and Assessing Teachers for Professional Certification: the First Decade of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. The latter book brings together the research and development work conducted by the NBPTS in the USA since its inception in 1987
Previous projects include the development of a national professional certification system for accomplished school principals for the Principals Australia Institute, the national peak body for principal organisations in Australia. He was also director of an ACER initiative to develop new standards-based methods for assessing the performance of teachers for professional registration and certification. He developed the ACER Professional Community Framework for accrediting schools with a strong professional culture, which provides school leaders with reports based on confidential on-line surveys of school staff, and the Student Perception Survey, which provides comprehensive feedback to teachers based on a confidential on-line survey of their students.

Positions

2006 - 2018 Principal Research Fellow, Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)
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2001 - 2005 Research Director, Australian Council for Educational Research (ACER)
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1972 - 2000 Associate Professor, Monash University, Australia ‐ Faculty of Education
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1970 - 1972 Lecturer, University of Stirling
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Honors and Awards

  • Distinguished Service Award - Australian Science Teachers Association (2001)
  • Fellowship - Australian College of Educators (2005)
  • James Darling Medal - Australian College of Educators (2014)
  • Member (AM) In the General Division of the Order of Australia (2022)


Contact Information

Australian Council for Educational Research
19 Prospect Hill Rd,
Camberwell, VIC, Australia 3124
T: +61 3 9277 5555
F: +61 3 9277 5500

Email:



Projects (3)

Reports (57)