Administrators as Scholars is dedicated to the intellectual growth of educators through a partnership between Princeton University’s Program in Teacher Preparation and the Teachers As Scholars member schools. It was formed with the objective of providing scholarly and intellectually engaging opportunities for administrators. One seminar per year is taught by a Princeton University faculty member and spans a wide range of topics and subject areas. The seminar is open to administrators from any grade level or content area, and it is intended to promote life-long learning. There is no fee for Administrators as Scholars as it is included as a benefit of being one of the member districts. Administrators as Scholars is made possible through the support of the Program in Teacher Preparation and area schools and districts.
2018-19 ADMINSTRATORS AS SCHOLARS
Learn Like a Baby: The Beginnings of Human Cognition and the Consequences of Early Language Experience
November 30, 2018, 9am – 10:30am
Casey Lew-Williams, Ph.D.
Department of Psychology and Princeton Baby Lab
Babies are capable of impressive feats of learning. Their abilities to look, listen, remember, and communicate enable them to break into the structure of the world; yet, learning is also fragile and subject to the environment. This seminar will focus on language as a window into the developing mind, and highlight landmark studies that elucidate the consequential and variable nature of early language learning. How do our basic cognitive capacities support the learning of the complexities of sounds, words, and sentences? Where do disparities in early language abilities come from? How consequential are the first years of language experience in determining later outcomes?
Casey Lew-Williams is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Princeton University, and Co-Director of the Princeton Baby Lab. He studies how babies learn, with a particular focus on language. He earned his Ph.D. at Stanford University, and worked at Northwestern University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison before joining Princeton in 2014.