Christopher is a Professor of Curriculum and Instruction in Early Childhood Education. He holds the Maxine Foreman Zarrow Endowed Faculty Fellowship in Education. He 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.

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.

Such work has led to 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, 25 have been co-authored with 13 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) 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; 3) Examining the development of preservice teachers as they employ iPads in their teacher training program.