Profile

Dr. Irvin is a former geologist/geochemist and elementary/middle school science educator who has taught in diverse educational settings, elementary through graduate. After earning a PhD at the University of Oregon (UO) in 2015 specializing in assessment and measurement, Dr. Irvin joined Behavioral Research and Teaching (BRT) at the UO as a Research Associate. As a doctoral student and since joining BRT as faculty, Dr. Irvin has developed extensive expertise in interim-formative and summative-accountability assessment systems development and validation, including for measuring the achievement growth and learning-related behaviors of exceptional groups (e.g., preschoolers and children with learning disabilities) over critical developmental stages (e.g., transition toward kindergarten).

Since being promoted to Research Assistant Professor at BRT in 2018, Dr. Irvin has continued honing an independent line of research characterized by building assessment and data literacy for key education stakeholders (students, teachers, parents, and administrators) within teaching and learning ecosystems. His research has been funded by the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and the Office of Special Education Programs (OSEP), with grants submissions to those and the National Science Foundation (NSF) pending and ongoing. Dr. Irvin recently documented the underlying structure and predictive-concordant capacity of Oregon’s kindergarten entry assessment and led development of the Oregon Science Alternate Assessment for students with significant cognitive disabilities. Two current federally-funded projects involve developing “smart” web-based professional development to support implementation of Response to Intervention (RTI) and a tablet-based assessment-learning tool to identify early risk factors of reading disabilities and inform teacher decision-making in preschool and kindergarten.