Jamal Abedi is a professor of education at the University of California, Davis. His research interests include studies in the areas of psychometrics and test and scale development. His recent works include studies on the validity of assessments, accommodations, and classification for English language learners. He serves on assessment advisory boards for a number of states and assessment consortia as an expert in testing English language learners. He is the recipient of the 2003 National Professional Service Award in recognition of his “Outstanding Contribution Relating Research to Practice” from the American Educational Research Association, the 2008 Lifetime Achievement Award from the California Educational Research Association, the 2013 National Association of Test Directors: “Outstanding Contribution to Educational Assessment,” and the 2014 University of California, Davis: “Distinguished Scholarly Public Service Award.” He holds a master’s degree in psychology and a PhD degree in psychometrics from Vanderbilt University.
Christian Faltis is the Dolly and David Fiddyment Chair in Teacher Education, Director of Teacher Education, and Professor of Language, Literacy and Culture in the School of Education at University of California, Davis. His research interests include teacher education for emergent bilingual users, Race Radical Vision in bilingual education, and critical arts–based learning. He was the recipient of an American Educational Research Association Distinguished Scholar Award in 2001. His recent books are The Arts and Emergent Bilingual Youth: Building Culturally Responsive, Critical and Creative Education in School and Community Contexts (2013, coauthored with S. V. Chappell), Implementing Educational Language Policy in Arizona: Legal, Historical and Current Practices in SE (2012, coedited with M. B. Arias), and Education, Immigrant Students, Refugee Students, and English Learners (2011, coauthored with G. Valdés). He is an oil painter whose work focuses on issues of Mexican immigrants and education, and his art has been featured in numerous scholarly and art-based literature. He holds an MA degree in Mexican American graduate studies from San José State University and an MA in second language education and a PhD in curriculum studies and teacher education with an emphasis in bilingual cross-cultural education from Stanford University.
