Faculty Research Interests

Faculty Name	Research Interests
Jennifer Czocher	Dr. Czocher's research interests include students’ mathematical thinking and cognition, research in undergraduate mathematics education (RUME), the impact of mathematical modeling tasks on students’ mathematical thinking, and how mathematical reasoning supports STEM education.
Paul Dawkins	Dr. Dawkins earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2009 under the direction of James Alvarez. His dissertation work focused on student apprenticeship into defining practices in an inquiry-oriented real analysis classroom. His subsequent research has continued to focus on mathematical practices, inquiry-oriented instruction, and proof-oriented mathematics. Other projects have focused on axiomatizing in geometry as well as language and logic in introduction to proof. Many of Dr. Dawkins’ experiments use guided reinvention to design novel instructional sequences. By observing how students may be guided to reinvent key mathematical ideas, one can learn about the cognitive shifts that are necessary for learning.
Sharon Gronberg	Dr. Gronberg received her Ph.D. from University of Texas at Austin.
Hamilton Hardison	Dr. Hardison's primary research interests lie in investigating students' mathematical thinking. His current research focuses on modeling students' constructions of quantities (e.g., angularity, length, etc.), how these constructions change over time, and how they vary across contexts. His additional interests include studying mathematical classroom discourse and discussing radical constructivism.
Hwa Young Lee	Dr. Lee’s research focuses on investigating students’ mathematical thinking and pre-service teacher education. In investigating students’ mathematical thinking, she uses the teaching experiment methodology to study students’ constructions of coordinate systems and their spatial and quantitative reasoning within coordinate systems. In conjunction with her teaching of pre-service teachers, she investigates pre-service teachers’ mathematical thinking and pedagogical considerations.
Kristen Lew	Dr. Kristen Lew received her PhD in Mathematics Education at Rutgers University in 2016. After completing her PhD, Dr. Lew spent a year as a postdoctoral associate at Arizona State University. Her research interests focus on better understanding the communicative aspect of mathematical proofs: how mathematicians present proofs and how students understand and implement the language of mathematical proof writing.
Kate Melhuish	Dr. Melhuish's research focuses on measuring student conceptions in group theory and supporting and analyzing how in-service teachers think and promote mathematical practices.
Bikai Nie	Dr. Nie's research interests include the preparation for pre-service math teachers, professional development for in-service mathematics teachers, mathematics curricula for K-16, problem solving, problem posing, and quantitative methods in mathematics education research.
Samuel Obara	Dr. Obara's research focuses on curriculum reform, professional development, teacher collaboration, reflection in teacher development, teacher knowledge, and teacher beliefs and practices and also in the area of mathematical modeling.
Cody Patterson	Dr. Patterson completed his Ph.D. in Mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin in 2010. His research investigates secondary students' and teachers' mathematical meanings for concepts and procedures in high school algebra, such as solving equations and graphing quantitative relationships. He is the recipient of a National Science Foundation DRK-12 award (#1908825) for the project "Reasoning Language for Teaching Secondary Algebra (ReLaTe-SA)".
Jessica Pierson-Bishop	Dr. Bishop's research interests are in two main areas: research on mathematics classroom discourse and research investigating children's mathematical thinking. She uses both qualitative and quantitative approaches to identify patters in teacher-student and student-student discourse to better understand how discourse influences mathematics learning and the development of positive mathematics identities.
Robert Sigley	Dr. Sigley received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University and has worked on several NSF-funded projects that involved studying students as they worked on tasks that provided opportunity for reinvention of their mathematical ideas through exploration and refinement of earlier ideas.
M. Alejandra Sorto	Dr. Sorto's research focuses on the preparation of teachers in the area of Statistics, the impact of professional development, and comparative studies in Latin-America and Africa. In particular, she is interested in developing instruments to measure content knowledge for teaching, teaching quality and analyzing its effect on student achievement.
Sharon Strickland	Dr. Strickland's research seeks to better understand and strengthen the curricular/pedagogical experiences and opportunities of students in undergraduate mathematics, especially those that seek to become teachers and/or mathematics majors.
Hiroko Warshauer	Dr. H. Warshauer's research interests include areas of teaching and learning that foster productive struggle and investigation of professional teacher noticing of student thinking at pre-service and in-service levels.
Max Warshauer	Dr. M. Warshauer is building programs to teach young students mathematics and is involved with research about new curriculum and how to teach mathematics effectively.
Alex White	Dr. White has research interests in mathematics education, and statistics and has authored several papers concerning the ability of students entering calculus to visualize functions and work with graphs.

Faculty Name

Research Interests

Jennifer Czocher

Dr. Czocher's research interests include students’ mathematical thinking and cognition, research in undergraduate mathematics education (RUME), the impact of mathematical modeling tasks on students’ mathematical thinking, and how mathematical reasoning supports STEM education.

Paul Dawkins

Dr. Dawkins earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Arlington in 2009 under the direction of James Alvarez. His dissertation work focused on student apprenticeship into defining practices in an inquiry-oriented real analysis classroom. His subsequent research has continued to focus on mathematical practices, inquiry-oriented instruction, and proof-oriented mathematics. Other projects have focused on axiomatizing in geometry as well as language and logic in introduction to proof. Many of Dr. Dawkins’ experiments use guided reinvention to design novel instructional sequences. By observing how students may be guided to reinvent key mathematical ideas, one can learn about the cognitive shifts that are necessary for learning.

Sharon Gronberg

Dr. Gronberg received her Ph.D. from University of Texas at Austin.

Hamilton Hardison

Dr. Hardison's primary research interests lie in investigating students' mathematical thinking. His current research focuses on modeling students' constructions of quantities (e.g., angularity, length, etc.), how these constructions change over time, and how they vary across contexts. His additional interests include studying mathematical classroom discourse and discussing radical constructivism.

Hwa Young Lee

Dr. Lee’s research focuses on investigating students’ mathematical thinking and pre-service teacher education. In investigating students’ mathematical thinking, she uses the teaching experiment methodology to study students’ constructions of coordinate systems and their spatial and quantitative reasoning within coordinate systems. In conjunction with her teaching of pre-service teachers, she investigates pre-service teachers’ mathematical thinking and pedagogical considerations.

Kristen Lew

Dr. Kristen Lew received her PhD in Mathematics Education at Rutgers University in 2016. After completing her PhD, Dr. Lew spent a year as a postdoctoral associate at Arizona State University. Her research interests focus on better understanding the communicative aspect of mathematical proofs: how mathematicians present proofs and how students understand and implement the language of mathematical proof writing.

Kate Melhuish

Dr. Melhuish's research focuses on measuring student conceptions in group theory and supporting and analyzing how in-service teachers think and promote mathematical practices.

Bikai Nie

Dr. Nie's research interests include the preparation for pre-service math teachers, professional development for in-service mathematics teachers, mathematics curricula for K-16, problem solving, problem posing, and quantitative methods in mathematics education research.

Samuel Obara

Dr. Obara's research focuses on curriculum reform, professional development, teacher collaboration, reflection in teacher development, teacher knowledge, and teacher beliefs and practices and also in the area of mathematical modeling.

Cody Patterson

Dr. Patterson completed his Ph.D. in Mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin in 2010. His research investigates secondary students' and teachers' mathematical meanings for concepts and procedures in high school algebra, such as solving equations and graphing quantitative relationships. He is the recipient of a National Science Foundation DRK-12 award (#1908825) for the project "Reasoning Language for Teaching Secondary Algebra (ReLaTe-SA)".

Jessica Pierson-Bishop

Dr. Bishop's research interests are in two main areas: research on mathematics classroom discourse and research investigating children's mathematical thinking. She uses both qualitative and quantitative approaches to identify patters in teacher-student and student-student discourse to better understand how discourse influences mathematics learning and the development of positive mathematics identities.

Robert Sigley

Dr. Sigley received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University and has worked on several NSF-funded projects that involved studying students as they worked on tasks that provided opportunity for reinvention of their mathematical ideas through exploration and refinement of earlier ideas.

M. Alejandra Sorto

Dr. Sorto's research focuses on the preparation of teachers in the area of Statistics, the impact of professional development, and comparative studies in Latin-America and Africa. In particular, she is interested in developing instruments to measure content knowledge for teaching, teaching quality and analyzing its effect on student achievement.