Yasmine El Masri

Honorary Research Fellow | Brasenose College

About me

Dr Yasmine El Masri is Associate Director for Research at England’s Office for The Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual) and an Honorary Research Fellow at the Department of Education.

Yasmine held various positions as a Research Fellow at Ofqual, OUCEA and Brasenose College. She has also an experience in research management at one of England’s examination boards (AQA) and acted as an Assessment Expert Advisor for the qualifications’ regulator in Wales, Qualification Wales.

Yasmine completed her DPhil in Education at OUCEA in 2015. Her doctoral thesis examined the impact of language on the difficulty of PISA science tests across UK, France and Jordan using different psychometric and statistical techniques including Rasch modelling and differential item functioning (DIF). In 2014, Yasmine received Kathleen Tattersall New Researcher Award from the Association for Education Assessment- Europe (AEA-Europe).

Before coming to Oxford, Yasmine was a science teacher in secondary schools in Beirut and Abu Dhabi. In addition to her DPhil degree from Oxford, Yasmine holds a Master of Arts in Science Education, a Teaching Diploma for teaching science in secondary schools and a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the American University of Beirut (AUB).

Yasmine led various externally funded projects, including a one-year ESRC GCRF Fellowship in 2017, during which she collaborated with a local NGO in Lebanon producing open-source interactive science tasks in multiple languages for underprivileged students in the country, including Syrian refugees. She also led a study within Project Calibrate, a three-year project funded by the Wellcome Trust and the Gatsby Foundation aiming to enhance summative assessments of practical science in England. Moreover, she was a co-investigator on various projects funded by external organizations (e.g., Critical Thinking in the International Baccalaureate’s Diploma Programme and the impact of translation in the Diploma Programme science assessments).

Research Interests

Language in assessment, science assessments, international large-scale assessments, critical thinking, comparability of assessments across cultures, digitisation of assessments, onscreen (computer-based) assessments

 

Research

Book chapters

Journal articles

Reports

Subjects Taught

  • MSc in Educational Assessment

Doctoral Applications

Yasmine welcomes doctoral applications from students interested in the following research areas:

  • item difficulty and demands
  • language in educational assessment
  • science assessments
  • differential item functioning (DIF)
  • Rasch modelling
  • international large-scale assessments

Funded Research Projects

The Effect of the Diploma Programme on Critical Thinking Development: An International Multisite Evaluation
International Baccalaureate Organisation. Award: $100,000. Co-Investigator & Project Manager
Calibrate Project
Researcher, Leader of Study 2 and member of the Project Management Board. Funder: Wellcome Trust; Award: £270,773
Using Technology in Science Tasks
Reducing Language Barriers for Syrian Refugees in Lebanon, PI. Funder: ESRC GCRF; Award: £100,000
Aga Khan University Language Policy Thinking Group PI. Funder
Aga Khan University; Award: £20,000
Oct 2016 – Jun 2017
Systematic review on judging demands and predicting task difficulty, PI. Funder
Oxford University Department of Education; Award: £3,366
Apr - October 2016
Task Difficulty Models, Co-investigator with Professor Jo-Anne Baird. Funder
Pearson Inc.; Award: £46,667
Jan - Dec 2015
Is Science lost in translation? Language effects in the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme Science Assessments
International Baccalaureate Organisation. Award: $55,000 USD. Co-investigator.