Robert F. Williams is an assistant professor of education — that is,
someone who teaches people how to teach — and a cognitive scientist who
studies the relationship between what teachers do and how learners construct
meaning.
His studies have included, among other things, jokes and clocks. “My
master’s thesis used measures of brain electrical activity to explore
differences in how the left and right hemispheres comprehend jokes,” Williams
explains. “My current work draws from my dissertation research on time-telling
instruction. It explores how teacher-talk and gestures guide students in mapping
concepts to the clock face as they learn to read the time.”
In July,
Williams presented a paper, “Instruction
as Guided Conceptualization,” and a poster, “The Image-Schematic
Structure of Pointing,” at the second international conference on Language,
Culture, and Mind in Paris. He also has a forthcoming chapter on “Gesture
as a Conceptual Mapping Tool.”
Back on campus, he is on the faculties
of the education department, the major and minor in linguistics, and the minor
in cognitive science, teaching such courses as Psychology of Learning,
Distributed Cognition, and Educating All Learners. In the Fall Term he supervised six student
teachers and co-led a weekly student teaching seminar.
Williams is a member
of the President’s Committee on Individualized Learning, which is studying
the personal nature of learning at Lawrence — in tutorials and independent
studies as well as in larger courses. In that spirit, he recently conducted
a tutorial in Assessment in Second Language Learning and advised students doing
independent studies in Mood-Dependent Memory Effects, Literacy Acquisition
in English Language Learners, and Computational Semantics.
