DipTeach (Prim), RCAE; BEd(Language Arts), SACAE; MA(TESOL), UTS, PhD, UQ. Dr Christina Davidson is a Senior Lecturer in literacy education in the School of Education at Charles Sturt University. She has been an academic for over twenty years and has taught in four universities during her career in higher education. Prior to becoming an academic, Christina taught in a number of primary and secondary schools in Sydney and in Wagga Wagga. She has taught secondary English, been a classroom teacher and specialist ESL teacher. Christina’s university teaching has encompassed undergraduate and postgraduate subjects in literacy and literacy education, as well as subjects addressing research methods. She is particularly interested in supporting pre-service teachers to examine and understand how literacy research and literacy practice may inform each other productively. For several years, Christina coordinated the Bachelor of Education (Primary) (Honours) in the School of Education and taught research methods to students enrolled in the degree. Her areas of expertise in teaching research methods include qualitative research methodologies and methods and transcription in qualitative research. In 2018, the International Journal of Qualitative Methods acknowledged Christina’s article, Transcription: Imperatives for qualitative research, as one of its twenty most cited articles in two decades. Predominately, Christina’s research examines the social interaction of children during their everyday activity in homes, communities and classrooms. She is particularly interested in the ways that children’s social interactions contribute to literacy learning and literacy teaching, Mostly recently, this work has encompassed social interactions during web searching in homes and preschools and social interactions that accomplish literacy lessons in primary school classrooms. Christina is a co-editor of the book Digital Childhoods: Technologies and children’s everyday lives and has recently been appointed as associate editor of the Australian Journal of Language and Literacy. Christina is a conversation analyst. She examines children’s social interaction with each other and with adults. Her recent work has addressed young children’s web searching and children’s interactions in classroom literacy lessons. The interest in young children’s social interactions during web searching had its beginnings in her early examination of web searching by two siblings under five years of age in their family home. This led to two key international journal publications and collaboration on a successful Australian Research Council Discovery grant with academics from Queensland University of Technology: The project, Interacting with knowledge, interacting with people: Web searching in early childhood, was led by Professor Susan Danby (QUT). Christina’s specific contribution includes as lead author on four publications, co-author on nine publications, and lead author and co-author of numerous conference papers and presentations. In 2016, Christina was co-recipient of the first national research grant awarded by the Primary English Teaching Association Australia: Edwards-Groves, C., & Davidson, C. (2015). Researching dialogic pedagogies for literacy learning across the primary years. Primary English Teaching Association Australia (PETAA). This project was a critical participatory action research study conducted with twelve teachers in regional and city schools in New South Wales. Project outcomes, to date, include a co-authored book for teachers and several co-authored journal articles examining interactional phenomena from classrooms. These include: Edwards-Groves, C., & Davidson, C. (2017). Becoming a meaning maker: Talk and interaction in the dialogic classroom. Newtown: Primary English Teaching Association Australia. Davidson, C.,& Edwards-Groves, C. (2019). Managing the delicate matter of advice giving: Accomplishing communicative space in Critical Participatory Action Research.Educational Action Research. doi/full/10.1080/09650792.2018.1559744 Davidson, C.,& Edwards-Groves, C. (2018). “But you said this...”: Students’ management of disagreement within a dialogic approach to literacy instruction. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 41(3), 190-200. Christina’s most recent research encompasses further collaboration with her colleague Associate Professor Christine Edwards-Groves. The project, Improving students’ oracy and writing through the use of dialogic pedagogies in disadvantaged schools,extends their work in the PETAA project to encompass a whole-school approach to changing classroom interaction. This study encompasses the individual research projects of all teachers in the school, as well as over-arching conversation analytic work to discern interactional phenomena that enable increased student participation in classroom talk about writing. Christina has taught a range of language and literacy subject at Charles Sturt. These include Christina has taught a number of research methods subjects at Charles Sturt, including: Christina supervises doctoral students in the School of Education and is especially interested in teaching students about ethnomethodology and conversation analysis.
Professorial Staff
Associate Professor Christina Davidson
Senior Lecturer
Wagga Wagga
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