Notice Board

J. Douglas Willms is a Professor and Co-Director of the Canadian Research Institute for Social Policy at the University of New Brunswick (UNB), and holds the Canada Research Chair in Literacy and Human Development. He is a Member of the US National Academy of Education, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and President Elect and Fellow of the International Academy of Education.

Dr. Willms has published over two hundred research articles and monographs pertaining to youth literacy, children's health, the accountability of schooling systems, and the assessment of national reforms. He is the editor of Vulnerable Children: Findings from Canada's National Longitudinal Study of Children and Youth, (University of Alberta Press, 2002) which received the Canadian Policy Research Award in 2002, and the author of Student engagement at school: A sense of belonging and participation (Paris: Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development), and Monitoring School Performance: A Guide for Educators (Falmer Press, 1992).

Dr. Willms played a lead role in developing the questionnaires for Canada's National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY) and the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). Recently, Willms and his colleagues designed the Early Years Evaluation (EYE), an instrument for the direct assessment of children's developmental skills at ages 3 to 6, and Tell Them From Me, an evaluation system for the continuous monitoring of school climate and student engagement and wellness.

Dr. Willms is known for his training of new investigators in the analysis of complex multilevel data. He regularly conducts workshops on multilevel modeling across Canada and throughout Asia, Europe and South America. He also established the New Investigators Network, an interdisciplinary, collaborative network of Canada's top social science researchers in the field of human development. Dr. Willms's current interests include the examination of family, school and community factors that contribute to the health and well-being of children and adolescents, and the use of continuous monitoring for evaluating school reforms.