Christopher is a Professor in the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy. He also is a Faculty Fellow with The Institute for Urban Policy Research and Analysis and a Faculty Fellow of the Center for Health and Social Policy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs. He is also the Past-Chair for the Early Education/Child Development Special Interest Group of the American Educational Research Association.

As a former preschool, kindergarten, and first grade teacher, his research centers on how early childhood education stakeholders across a range of political and educational contexts make sense of and respond to policymakers’ reforms. He has looked at this issue across a range of political and educational contexts using multiple theoretical and practitioner-based perspectives that span the fields of early childhood education, curriculum and instruction, teacher education, and policy analysis.

Through this work, his goal is to advocate for early learning environments that foster, sustain, and extend the complex educational, cultural, and individual goals and aspirations of teachers, children, and their families. To achieve this goal, he has produced empirical, theoretical, and practitioner-oriented publications on such topics as: high-stakes standards-based accountability reform in early childhood, early learning standards, pre-kindergarten (Pre-k) assessment, Pre-k alignment with elementary school, school readiness, culturally relevant and developmentally appropriate teaching, the changed kindergarten, neoliberal reform, teacher education, professional development, and teaching a mandated curriculum. Among his publications, 39 have been co-authored with 16 current and former graduate students at UT-Austin.

His recent publications focus on three issues: 1) Examining how familial, education, research, and political stakeholders make sense of the changed kindergarten; 2) RIGOROUS DAP; 3) Understanding how practicing and pre-service early childhood educators in high-stakes public teaching contexts can engage in practices that support the cultural, individual, and developmental learning needs of children.