COE Faculty Profile

Matthew D. Davis, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Division of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies

Email: davismat@umsl.edu
Office: 204 Marillac Hall
Phone: 314-516-5953

Matthew D. Davis, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of MO-St. Louis. Dr. Davis earned an interdisciplinary Ph.D., (curriculum & instruction, educational administration, history, and public affairs) at The University of TX at Austin in 2000. While at UT-Austin, he was awarded the AERA/Spencer Doctoral Fellowship and the Hollis, L. Caswell Laureate Doctorate Scholarship from Kappa Delta PI, both nationally competitive recognitions.  For the five years prior to arrival at UMSL in 2005, he was Assistant Professor of Secondary Education and Foundations of Education at Rowan University (New Jersey).

Dr. Davis is a historian of education. His principal research focuses on white allies to non-white schooling struggles, recognizing both the problematic, yet important, nature of this activity in the past, present, and future.  In 2005, Dr. Davis' revised dissertation, Exposing a Culture of Neglect: Hershel T. Manuel and Mexican American Schooling was published by Information Age Publishing. Currently he is working on a book-length  project, tentatively titled "The General Education Board and Black Public Schooling in the Interwar American South." he is also underway on a project that will explore gender and educational policymaking in British Colonial Africa. Dr. Davis' articles have been published in many prominent education journals including the Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, the Educational Forum, the Kappa Delta Pi Record, Curriculum History, and the American Educational History Journal.

Dr. Davis' extensive professional activities include active participation on many journal editorial boards (the Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, the Kappa Delta Pi Record, theAfrican Journal of Historical Sciences, the FASCD Policy Review, and, as a student, the International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education). He has been Counselor to Rowan University chapter of Kappa Delta Pi, the international honor society in education, and is President of the Society for the Study of Curriculum History.

• Black Education
• Curriculum
• Educational Policy
• Educational Reform
• Equity
• Gender Studies
• Hispanic Education
• History
• Race