Dr Chris Davies[back]

Chris graduated in English at Selwyn College, Cambridge and gained a PGCE at the West Midlands College of Walsall. He taught in comprehensive schools in Oxfordshire, and was Head of English at Bartholomew School, Eynsham until 1985. He took an MSc in Educational Studies at the Department of Educational Studies in 1983. He came to Educational Studies in 1985, and gained his DPhil, entitled "Ideologies of the subject and the professional training of English teachers", in 1994.

Chris was originally an English specialist, and taught PGCE secondary English at the Department of Educational Studies for several years. He was Vice President of Kellogg College, Oxford University's college for part-time students, from 2001-2006. He co-ordinates the e-Learning Research Group and supervises research students in this field.  

From 1998-2003, Chris co-ordinated the Oxford-Intel Project at the Department of Education, researching into the development of new educational software, kar2ouche, as well as the development of ICT training materials for teachers. From 2002-2004, Chris and Peter Birmingham worked with Oxfordshire Community Network, Oxfordshire LEA, and many Oxfordshire teachers to develop research into the implementation of broadband technology in Oxfordshire schools. This work was carried out in partnership with the Oxford Internet Institute, and funded by a Becta Bursary.

Chris is currently involved in three projects: he is director of the  Learner and their Context project, looking into learners' uses of technology in the home for learning, as part of the Government's Harnesssing Technology Strategy. This project is intended to last for three years, and is funded at £350K per year. He is one of the organisers of a current ESRC funded seminar series The Educational and Social Impact of New Technologies on Young People in Britain, and is a member of a cross-disciplinary team working on the first stage of a project to develop a computer-based digital tool for supporting adult learners: The Learning Companion: an embodied conversational agent for learning.

Chris is a Research Associate of the Oxford Internet Institute.

• 2007     “What can technology do for/to English?” in Teaching Secondary English with ICT  Eds. Anthony Adams & Sue Brindley, Open University Press, Buckingham2005     “Does access to broadband technology in schools result in a shift towards independent and active learning in classrooms?” in ed. A.Méndez-Vilas. Recent Research Developments in Learning Technologies
• 2005    (with Peter Birmingham) e-Learning in broadband-connected classrooms. Becta:   Coventry
• 2005     (with Geoff Hayward and Lina Lukman) Digital Technologies in 14-19 Education. Literature Review, Nesta Futurelab: Bristol 
• 2005    (with Peter Birmingham) “Implementing Broadband Internet in the Classroom: Key Issues for Research and Practice”. Oxford Internet Institute Research Report, January 2005.
• 2002     (with Peter Birmingham and Christian Greiffenhagen) “Turn to Face the Bard: Making sense of three-way interactions between teacher, pupils and technology in the classroom.” Education, Communication and Information 2, 2/3, 139-161.
• 2001     (with Peter Birmingham) “Storyboarding Shakespeare: Learners interactions with storyboard software in the process of understanding difficult literary texts”. Journal of Information Technology for Teacher Education 10, 3, 241-253.
• 2000    (with Maria Birbili) “What do people need to know about writing in order to write in their jobs?” British Journal of Educational Studies, Vol. 48, No. 4, December 2000, 429-445