Professor Seongah Im, of the UH Mānoa College of Education Department of Educational Psychology (EDEP), was awarded $40,000* for two grant projects aimed at strengthening the validity and fairness of large-scale assessment systems at the international and local levels.
Im is the co-director of the Validation of the PTE Core English Test project, funded by Pearson PLC. She is also serving as director of the Hawaiʻi Department of Education (HIDOE) funded project, Evaluation of the Hawai‘i Multi-Tiered Systems of Support (MTSS) Assessment Tool.
“I am pleased that our work supports both international assessment fairness and local school improvement efforts here in Hawaiʻi,” Im said. “Together, these projects advance rigorous, evidence-based validation research that informs policy and practice while highlighting the importance of international and local collaboration in addressing educational and social issues through measurement and validation research.”
The PTE Core English Test is currently used by Immigration, Refugees, and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) for permanent residency applications across all economic immigration classes. The project team is conducting validation research on the test, focusing on construct validity and measurement invariance across different economic immigration categories to ensure fairness, comparability, and accuracy of score interpretation.
Im’s second project is the continuation of a previous collaboration between the HIDOE and the Hawai‘i Education Research Network (HERN) from 2023–2024. The project will examine how the MTSS Assessment Tool’s indicators confirm the suggested key components for MTSS and how they relate to broader school performance metrics, including academic achievement and social-emotional learning indicators.
“For the PTE Core project, we hope to contribute meaningful evidence supporting equitable assessment practices in high-stakes immigration decisions,” Im said. “And, for the Hawai‘i MTSS project, our goal is to provide actionable evidence that helps schools better align multi-tiered support systems with measurable academic and social-emotional outcomes.”
*correction was made from $50,000 to $40,000
