Christina Dobbs

Dr. Christina L. Dobbs is an Assistant Professor in English Education. Her research interests include academic language development, the argumentative writing of students, and professional development for secondary content teachers. She has authored a variety of publications on these topics, following the completion of her doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is highly engaged in Wheelock efforts focused on equity, diversity, and inclusion. She has served as an adjunct instructor at Lesley University, Hunter College, Simmons College, and Salem State University and as a consultant for the Cambridge Public Schools, Boston Public Schools, and Concord School District in New Hampshire. She served as the Manuscripts Editor for the Harvard Educational Review, and she edited a volume titled Humanizing Education: Critical Alternatives to Reform. She is a former high school teacher in Houston, Texas, as well as a literacy coach and reading specialist.

Education

• Ed. D., Harvard Graduate School of Education, Human Development and Education, 2013
• M. Ed., Harvard Graduate School of Education, Language and Literacy, 2006
• B. A., Texas A&M University, English, 2000

Research

Dr. Dobbs' research program takes a fine-grained approach to looking at how students explicitly use academic language in their persuasive essays. The current dataset is one of the largest ever assembled for close study at the middle school level, studying approximately 750 essays on a variety of topics written by 179 middle graders over the course of a supplemental vocabulary intervention. The studies being conducted analyze this data closely for a variety of language features ranging from word-level to discourse-level structures, providing us with heretofore unknown information about students' writing development.

Selected Publications

Dobbs, C. L. & Kearns, D. (forthcoming). Using new vocabulary in writing: Exploring how word and learner characteristics relate to the likelihood that writers use newly taught vocabulary. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal.

Dobbs, C. L., Ippolito, J., & Charner-Laird, M. (forthcoming). Layering intermediate and disciplinary literacy work: Lessons learned from a secondary social studies teacher team. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy.

Charner-Laird, M., Ippolito, J., & Dobbs, C. L. (forthcoming). The roles of teacher leaders in guiding PLCs focused on disciplinary literacy. Journal of School Leadership.

Ippolito, J., Dobbs, C. L., Charner-Laird, M., & Lawrence, J. F. (2016). Delicate layers of learning: Achieving disciplinary literacy requires continuous, collaborative adjustment. JSD: Learning Forward, 37(2), 34-38.

Uccelli, P., Galloway, E. P., Barr, C., D., Meneses, A., & Dobbs, C. L. (2015). Beyond vocabulary: Exploring cross-disciplinary academic language proficiency and its association with reading comprehension. Reading Research Quarterly, 50(3), 337-356.

Baron, C. & Dobbs, C. L. (2014). Expanding the notion of historical text through historic building analysis. Journal of Adolescent and Adult Literacy, 58(6), 462-471.

Dobbs, C. L. (2014). Signaling organization and stance: Measuring the use of academic language markers in middle grade persuasive writing. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 27(8), 1327-1352.

Uccelli, P., Barr, C. D., Dobbs, C. L., Galloway, E. P., Meneses, A., & Sánchez, E. (2014). Core academic language skills (CALS): An expanded operational construct and a novel instrument to chart school-relevant language proficiency in pre-adolescent and adolescent learners. Applied Psycholinguistics, 36(5), 1-33.

Ippolito, J., Dobbs, C. L., & Charner-Laird, M. (2014). Bridge builders: Teacher leaders forge connections and bring coherence to literacy initiatives. JSD: Learning Forward, 35(3), 22-26.

Charner-Laird, M., Ippolito, J., Dobbs, C. L. (2014). Teacher-led professional learning. Harvard Education Letter, 30(5).