Dr Surette van Staden Acting Director of CEA

Dr Surette van Staden was appointed as Acting Director of the Centre for Evaluation and Assessment. She is a senior lecturer in the Department of Science, Mathematics and Technology Education.

Dr Van Staden has an interest in educational assessment, specifically the assessment of reading literacy. She worked on the Progress in International Reading Literacy Study (PIRLS) 2006, an international large-scale comparative study on reading literacy, and acted as the co-national research coordinator for the study in 2011 in South Africa.

She is a member of the ‘Suid-Afrikaanse Akademie vir Wetenskap en Kuns’ and was elected member of the ‘Onderwyskommissie of the Akademie’ for the term 2015 to 2017.

In 2014 she received a Knowledge, Interchange and Collaboration grant from the NRF to attend the World Education Research Association (WERA) Focal Meeting in Edinburgh, Scotland, where she presented evidence of differential item functioning for different languages of the test that came to light in the prePIRLS overall results.

Dr Van Staden was elected as an inaugural fellow for the African Science Leadership Programme in 2015 and appointed as WERA network coordinator for work in reading literacy and associated reading interventions for high-risk children from disadvantaged communities. She received a Y2 rating from the NRF.