Dr. Marcia Davidson

Dr. Davidson is the Global Director of Reading and Writing Instruction for Room to Read, an organization with reading intervention programs in nine countries in Asia and Africa. She is a nationally certified school psychologist and worked in public schools for 15 years, serving children and families from preschool through age 21. She was a faculty member in both elementary education and special education departments at the university level, teaching courses in reading methods and assessment for 12 years. More recently, Dr. Davidson began to focus on reading programs in poor countries. She designed an early reading intervention and provided technical assistance in the implementation of the Liberia USAID/World Bank EGRA Plus early grade reading project, and worked as a Senior Technical Advisor in the scaling up of this project for 1 ½ years during a residency in Liberia working for RTI International. In her current role, she works with her country teams on reading program design in local languages, classroom program implementation, classroom support, community engagement and partnerships, assessment and program impact. She has published studies in reading and reading assessment; current research interests include evaluating the impact of reading interventions in local languages, continuous assessment approaches, and effective teacher professional development in poor countries.

Dr. Davidson earned her BA in elementary education from Webster University, her MS in community-school psychology from Central Florida University and her PhD in special education from the University of Washington.