Dr Luc Le joined ACER in October 2000. He has a strong background in mathematics and
psychometrics. His current areas of specialisation include IRT, CAT and DIF analysis. He
has been the author or joint author of many papers in Optimisation and in Educational
Measurement. He received his Masters degree by research at RMIT and PhD at the University
of Melbourne, in Educational Measurement. He also completed his PhD dissertation in
Mathematical Optimisation and Operational Research at Hanoi Institute of Mathematics in
2000. 

Dr Luc Le has been a senior statistician/psychometrian working on a large number of major
large-scale projects at ACER such as: 

•International surveys: Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 

•Higher education: Medical graduate entry tests including GAMSAT, GAMSAT UK, and HPAT;
UMAT and HPAT Ireland for Medical undergraduate entry; Generic skill assessment GSA (has
been used in Australian and Columbian universities), ISAT (for international students),
law entry ALSET, and business entry BMAT 

•School education: second language tests ALC (Chinese, French, German, Indonesian,
Italian, and Japanese), and School selective scholarship test SHS 

•Vocational education: VST test for selecting Fire-fighters, and GSA Corporate for
selecting candidates by the Reserved Bank 

•Computer Adaptive Test (CAT): Adult Literacy and Numeracy Assessment Tool-New Zealand
(ACER, NZCER and ICT company Fronde) for New Zealand adult learners ; Conducting a
workshop on CAT for Indonesian Ministry of Education in 2009 (under AUSAID funding). 

Prior to joining ACER, Dr Luc Le worked for 12 years as a Lecturer and Research Fellow at
the Department of Mathematics and Informatics, Hue University, Vietnam. 

Articles

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Investigating gender differential item functioning across countries and test languages for PISA Science items, International Journal of Testing (2009)

This study uses PISA cycle 3 field trial data to investigate the relationships between gender...

 

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Reverse polyblock approximation for optimization over the weakly efficient set and efficient set, Acta Mathematica Vietnamica (2001)

A new method is developed for maximizing a concave function over the weakly efficient set,...

 

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A New Approach to Optimization Under Monotonic Constraint (with H Tuy), Journal of Global Optimization (2000)

A new efficient branch and bound method is proposed for solving convex programs with an...

 
On equivalence between convex maximization and optimization over efficient set (with L D. Muu), Vietnam Journal of Mathematics (1996)
 

Books

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Graduate Skills Assessment : Stage One Validity Study (with Sam Hambur and Ken Rowe), Higher Education Research (2002)

The Graduate Skills Assessment (GSA) is a new test with complex aims and is in...

 

Contributions to Books

Global optimization approach to optimizing over the efficient set (with L D. Muu), Recent advances in optimization (1996)
 

Refereed Conference Papers and Presentations

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Differential performance of poor readers in international mathematics tests by item formats, Paper presented at the European Conference on Educational Research (2011)

The important role of language, including reading, on student performance on assessments in school academic...

 
Student perceptions of target language use in the secondary school classroom! (with Bernadette Brouwers), Paper presented at the 18th Biennial Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers Associations National Conference (AFMLTA2011) (2011)
 
Investigating item difficulty change by item positions under the Rasch model (with Van Nguyen), Paper presented at the 17th International Meeting of the Psychometric Society (2011)

In operational testing programs using item response theory (IRT), item parameter invariance is one of...

 
We need more time! (with Bernadette Brouwers), Paper presented at the NZALT International Biennial Conference (2010)
 
Effects of student reading proficiency on PISA mathematics items – A DIF study across Countries (with Ray Adams), Paper presented at the PISA Research Conference (2009)