Dr John Ainley

Dr John Ainley, BSc, MEd, PhD Melb, FACE, was Principal Research Fellow, and formerly Deputy CEO (Researcher) of the Australian Council for Educational Research and Research Director of its National and International Surveys Program.

His research interests span several areas. His research on post-compulsory education and training involved analyses of the progress of young people in Australia through school, further education, training and work, studies of influences on subject choice in the senior secondary years and the progress of students through the senior secondary years. He used longitudinal research methods to study the development of literacy over the first five years of school. His research on information and communication technology in education encompassed case studies of innovative teaching and learning practices in schools and a sequence of national and international surveys of ICT literacy. He also contributed to national and international surveys of civics and citizenship education and international surveys of teaching and learning practices. He also contributed to the Second Australian Child and Adolescent Survey of Mental Health and Wellbeing (Young Minds Matter).

Dr Ainley has been Chair of the Advisory Council for the Centre for Educational Statistics and Evaluation in New South Wales, Chair of the New South Wales National Partnerships Evaluation Committee, and a member of the Ministerial Advisory Group on Literacy and Numeracy in New South Wales. He is currently a member of the Publications and Editorial Committee of the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). He has been a member of the Consortium Advisory Group for the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, the Youth Advisory Group for the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, and the Education and Training Statistics Advisory Group of the Australian Bureau of Statistics. He has been an editorial board member of Education Research and Evaluation and the Education Research Review and was formerly editor of the Australian Journal of Education. He has been a visiting scholar at the Far West Laboratory for Educational Research in San Francisco and the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education.