Our featured interview is with James Dean (“J. D.”) Brown, Professor of the graduate faculty of the Department of ESL at the University of Hawai’i in Manoa. Dr. Brown specializes in the areas of language testing, curriculum design, program evaluation, and research methods. He has taught all over the world—in North and South America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. He has served on the editorial boards of prestigious journals such as TESOL Quarterly, JALT Journal, and Language Testing, to name a few. He has also written and edited many books and articles. Recent ones include Mixed Methods Research for TESOL (2014), Cambridge Guide to Research in Language Teaching and Learning (2015), Introducing Needs Analysis and English for Specific Purposes (2016), and Statistics Corner: Questions and Answers about Language Testing Statistics (2009).
Dr. Brown was interviewed by J. Lake and Trevor Holster, both of whom are experienced university teachers on the editorial board of Shiken, the language assessment publication of the JALT Testing and Evaluation (TEVAL) SIG. J. Lake is currently the Program Chair of the TEVAL SIG and the Fukuoka chapter of JALT. His research interests include language learning motivation, language assessment, and positive psychology. Trevor Holster is the Publications Chair of the JALT TEVAL SIG. He is interested in researching the integration of classroom assessment with instruction, performance-based testing, peer-assessment, and placement testing. So without further ado, to the interview!
