Professor of Educational Psychology

Robert completed his doctoral work at the University of California at Los Angeles in Educational Psychology and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Laboratory of Comparative Human Cognition at the University of California, San Diego in cross-cultural psychology. His research has centered on the sociocultural basis of motivation, learning, and instruction, with a focus on reading and literacy among English learners, and students in at-risk conditions, and he teaches courses in learning and motivation. Robert also has a courtesy appointment in the USC psychology department.

Robert is a member of the National Academy of Education, a fellow of the American Psychological Association and of the American Educational Research Association, and is also a member of the International Society for Cultural Research and Activity Theory, the Council for Exceptional Children (Mental Retardation Division; Learning Disabilities Division; Division for Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Exceptional Learners), the American Anthropological Association (Council on Anthropology and Education), the International Reading Association, the California Reading Association, and the National Reading Conference.

He recently served as the associate editor of the American Educational Research Journal, and currently serves on the editorial boards of several educational journals. He chairs of the committee which oversees the Ed.D. Doctoral Program in the Rossier School. He served as a panel member on the National Academy of Science Report on the Overrepresentation of Minority Students in Special Education, and also served as a member of the National Literacy Panel (SRI International and Center for Applied Linguistics) looking at issues in early reading with English language learners.