Our staff:
DANA V. DIACONU was born in Romania and received her BSc in Chemistry from University of Bucharest in 1997. She came to United States in 1999 for graduate studies and received an MSc in Chemistry from Brown University in 2002. Dana is currently completing her PhD from the Educational Research, Measurement and Evaluation Program (ERME) at the Lynch School of Education, Boston College. Her dissertation focuses on the impact of single-sex education on middle school student achievement in science, in the international context provided by the Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) and secondly on a new method to assess the sensitivity of estimated parameters to the presence of unobserved selection bias.
In addition to her work with Agora Education Services, Dana works as Associate Director for Assessment and Evaluation at the Center for Education at Rice University. Her prior experience includes a position as Research Associate with the TIMSS & PIRLS International Study Center at Boston College and various teaching and research assistant positions at Brown University and Boston College. Dana earned a teaching certificate from Sheridan Learning Center at Brown University and the 2001 W.T. King Prize for outstanding performance as a Teaching Assistant. She is also NIH certified in working with human subjects, and attended trainings in Hierarchical Data Modeling (HLM) offered by Drs. Raudenbush and Bryk at the University of Chicago in September 2006, and PIRLS (International Reading Literacy Study) Database organized by the National Center for Educational Statistics in August 2003.
Dana V. Diaconu’s technical expertise includes:
- assessment, program evaluation and research design in elementary and middle-school STEM education, focused on student achievement and teacher professional development in national and international contexts;
- more than six years research and teaching experience in quantitative research methods, including general linear models (GLM), hierarchical linear models (HLM), experimental (Randomized Control Trials, Clustered Randomized Trials) and quasi-experimental designs, cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, causality issues.
- Survey research, classroom observations and other qualitative methods.
- mastery of statistical software packages: SPSS, HLM, AM, Optimal Design (for power analysis in RCTs), and WINSTEPS.
- experience with writing research and technical reports, conference presentations, and peer reviewed journal articles.
- strong ability to communicate statistical findings to technical and non-technical audiences.
Publications:
Growing a Culture of Science in the Classroom, by Wallace Dominey, Dana V. Diaconu and Judy Radigan. Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Educational Research Association San Diego, April 13-17, 2009.
Curriculum Vitae:
Dana Dianconu cv December 2009
Contact Information:
Dana Diaconu
Agora Education Services
91 Baldwin St.
Boston, MA 02129-1423
ddiaconu@edevaluator.org * 857-636-0918
© 2009 Agora Education Services, Boston, MA 02129