Michael D. Hicks

Dr. Hicks graduated with a PhD in Mathematics Education from Texas State University in 2021 and is currently a postdoctoral associate at Virginia Tech.

His primary research interests include exploring undergraduate students' thinking about advanced mathematical topics and investigating authority relations in mathematics classrooms.

Dr. Hicks' dissertation was focused on constructing a framework for analyzing students' analogical reasoning in mathematics, particularly between analogous mathematical objects in group theory and ring theory. The result of this work was the Analogical Reasoning in Mathematics (ARM) framework, which expanded upon previous frameworks of analogical reasoning outside of mathematics education by explicitly identifying several new aspects of analogical reasoning that were present in students' thinking.

Dr. Hicks has also been heavily involved in the development of a framework for describing authority relations in the mathematics classroom: the AAA (read triple A) framework. Borrowing from sociological constructs put forth by Goffman, the AAA framework identifies who gets to have authority over what kinds of mathematical activities in a lesson: Authorship, Animation, and Assessment of mathematical ideas.

Finally, Dr. Hicks has also been greatly involved in two other projects: the orchestration of discussions around proving and proof in undergraduate classrooms as part of the ODAP project, and investigating high-achieving African American's perceptions of the support provided to them through participation in a summer math camp.

Dr. Hicks' future research ideas include

1.  Leveraging the ARM framework to design curriculum in abstract algebra that would allow students to purposefully reason by analogy to reinvent structures in ring theory by analogy with structures in group theory, and 
2.  Exploring the role of vagueness and uncertainty present in students' discourse as they reason about advanced mathematics.