John Norris was the senior research director of the Center for Language Education and Assessment Research (CLEAR) in the Research & Development division at ETS through June 2022. He received his Ph.D. in second language acquisition in 2004 and an M.A. in English as a second language in 1996—both from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. He received a B.A. degree (cum laude) in modern languages/German from Texas A&M University.
While at ETS, Norris managed all research endeavors of the CLEAR group, and he conducted research in particular for the TOEFL® family of assessments and related language learning and teaching projects. Prior to joining ETS, he was a tenured associate professor at Georgetown University and at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa, and he also worked as assessment specialist at Northern Arizona University. His primary research interests included task-based language teaching and assessment, program evaluation, meta-analysis, and assessment validation.
He has published widely on language education and assessment, including recent books, Assessing Academic English For Higher Education Admissions and Second Language Educational Experiences for Adult Learners. His research has received multiple awards, including the ACTFL/MLJ Paul Pimsleur award for research in foreign language education and the TESOL and Heinle & Heinle Distinguished Research award. He has also served on the editorial boards of numerous professional journals, and he is a founding editor for two book series: Task-Based Language Teaching: Issues, Research, and Practice; and Innovations in Language Learning and Assessment at ETS. In addition to English, Norris speaks and conducts research on German, Portuguese, and Spanish, and he is currently working on acquiring Japanese.