Frances Helen Christie (born 1939), is Emeritus professor of language and literacy education at the University of Melbourne,[1] and honorary professor of education at the University of Sydney.
[citation needed] She specialises in the field of systemic functional linguistics (SFL) and has completed research in language and literacy education, writing development, pedagogic grammar, genre theory, and teaching English as a mother tongue and as a second language.
She was educated at Cremorne Girls' High School and completed a BA majoring in English and history, and a Dip Ed., at the University of Sydney.
Her teaching career took her to schools in rural New South Wales and to London in the UK.
While completing a Master of Education at the University of Sydney (1977), Christie was highly influenced by the outstanding scholar of the history of educational theory, curriculum design and pedagogical principles in the western tradition, W. F. Connell (1916-2001), and focused her thesis on the history of English teaching in the Australian colony of NSW.
During her time with the Australian federal government Curriculum Development Centre, Canberra (1978–81), Christie worked on the national Language Development Project (LDP), a curriculum development initiative addressing the English oral language and literacy needs of children in the upper primary to junior secondary school years.
[2] At the same time, she was studying and working with M. A. K. Halliday, a consultant on the LDP, at the University of Sydney.
She completed a PhD on early primary school writing development (supervised by J.R. Martin, University of Sydney) in 1990.
[4] At the time, English teachers resisted any formal talk of teaching knowledge about language.
[6] Christie also noticed and nurtured valuable connections between the work of Basil Bernstein, the SFL model and pedagogy, bringing Bernstein to Melbourne in 1996 to collaborate.
[7] Her most recent collaboration with Beverly Derewianka (University of Wollongong) was an Australian Research Council (2004-6) funded project investigating the key indicators of development in adolescent writing in English, History and Science.
[8] The book 'School Discourse' (2008) that Christie and Derewanka co-authored out of this project was described by Mary J. Schleppegrell (School of Education, University of Michigan, USA) as "a tremendous contribution to our understanding of the paths learners follow in written language development from early childhood to late adolescence".
[9] Christie has also been instrumental in bringing the work of other scholars to publication, for example in the Series on Language Education she edited for Oxford University Press.
Christie has made a significant contribution to educational linguistics and to the development of the English language curriculum in Australia.
She was also the founding President (1995-7) of the Australian Systemic Functional Linguistics Association (ASFLA).
Applied Linguistics Association of Australia Occasional Papers Number 3.
Applied Linguistics Association of Australia Occasional Papers Number 4.
'The "received tradition" of English teaching: the decline of rhetoric and the corruption of grammar'.
Genres and Institutions: Social Processes in the Workplace and School.
Pedagogy and the shaping of consciousness : linguistic and social processes.
Genre and institutions: social processes in the workplace and school.
Christie, F. 2004b ‘Authority and its role in the pedagogic relationship of schooling’.
Systemic Functional Linguistics and Critical Discourse Analysis.
Christie, F. 2004c ‘Systemic functional linguistics and a theory of language in education’.
Christie, F. 2004d ‘Revisiting some old themes: the role of grammar in the teaching of English’.
Language, knowledge and pedagogy: functional linguistic and sociological perspectives.
Language education throughout the school years : a functional perspective.