Dr Christina Davidson is an Associate Professor 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 schools in Sydney and in Wagga Wagga. Christina has focused on literacy education throughout her career as an educator.

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.

Christina’s 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 lead author on four publications, co-author on nine publications, lead author and co-author of numerous conference papers and presentation.

 In 2016, Christina was the 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.

This project was a critical participatory action research project 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. This 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.

Professional memberships: Australian Institute forEthnomethodology and Conversation Analysis; International Pragmatics Association; American Educational Research Association; Primary English Teaching Association; Australian Literacy Educators’ Association; Australian Association for Research in Education. In 2019, Christina was appointed an associated editor for the Australian Journal of Language and Literacy.

Christina has taught a range of literacy and research subjects at CSU. She supervises doctoral students in the School of Education and is especially interested in teaching research students about ethnomethodology and conversation analysis