[9] She is a Research Advisor to the Better Start Literacy Approach programme and served on the advisory board of the National Language Foreign Resource Centre,[10] the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa from 2014 to 2017.
[13] The globalisation of education and the need for teachers to be trained in the use of information communications technology (ICT) to incorporate global themes into learning, became a research focus for Davis.
In 1999, she developed a set of principles for future teacher education that would use research to understand the role of ICT in increasing access to learning on a global scale and "stimulating rich contexts for critical reflection".
[17] Follow up papers to this research, co-authored by Davis, noted that the project had highlighted the need to "extend the cultural and theoretical perspectives beyond the historically dominant European cultures",[18] and that "while the project has also dispelled any naïve beliefs as to our ability to effect widespread change in our universities...[it had]... confirmed [the] belief that communication technologies, blended with faculty collaboration and limited student travel, [made] potent ingredients for the preparation of the next generation of leaders of educational technology".
[19] In 2013, Davis was a Principal investigator along with Julie Mackey in collaborative research in a New Zealand school that explored what successful leaders did to integrate digital technologies and how teacher capability could be improved as a result.
[20] Davis's work began to focus on virtual learning and distance education, and after co-authoring an article noting research in the United States that had shown by 2005 almost one-third of US public schools had students involved in this type of learning,[21] she collaborated to produce a comprehensive analysis of this research that included clear definitions of the concepts and details of the educational teamwork in the US schools that was essential in making the programmes effective.
The paper for this case study set the context within initiatives by the New Zealand Ministry of Education, including laptops for teachers, the rollout of fast internet connectivity and the establishment of a national Virtual Learning Network involving clusters of schools.
[24] Following the 2010 Canterbury earthquake, an investigation by Davis revealed that the necessary virtual schooling in the area at the time had been a community success and recognised the value of engaging in twenty-first-century education in a fast-changing world.
She also supported the leadership of Professor Amina Chariana to bridge even more extensive divides in India and deploy e-learning to reach underserved children in many states.