Esther is a professor for Vocational Education and Training at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany. She studied business education, business administration and economics (1998 to 2003) and doctorate (2005) at Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, habilitation at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (2010), teaching at various international (including Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley) and national universities (including Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, University of Paderborn), director of the German Institute for Adult Education, Leibniz Centre for Lifelong Learning e.V. (DIE). Her main research interests are in the areas of empirical teaching-learning research, in particular in the areas of psychometric competence measurement. She develops innovative and workplace-oriented assessments that record the status quo and the foreseeable development of vocational competences. In this context, she is the international Lead Expert in the area of business and administration of the OECD and responsible for the design of an assessment framework for an international VET assessment (IVETA).