The question of academic success and equity has long occupied Dr. Allevato’s mind. Having taught remedial math for more than a decade and recognizing how complex the drive for academic success is, he has taken the quest to understand the sources of students’ intrinsic motivation all the way to Brazil. His work with preschoolers in Brazil was to understand how impoverish children think and react to different situations, considering the concept of a growth mindset and grit. Last Fall, Dr. Allevato implemented the Think Aloud Strategy as a method to enhance reading and comprehension as a form of students apprenticing into thinking math and science. The results of his analysis of learning outcomes and students’ perceptions was a mixed bag. He noted that what was successful for some was a failure for others. A challenge he found a solution for. In this presentation, he will show the results of his solution that he implemented. He denominated the fluid grouping approach where student’s groups are not fixed, but weekly changed in order to expose students of different levels and backgrounds.
About the Presenter:
Eugene Allevato joined Woodbury University in 2001 and is currently an adjunct faculty member. Eugene initially worked in basic research and development while working for CALTECH at Jet Propulsion Laboratory. As an Engineer, he worked on optimization and quality management projects.
Eugene was granted a scholarship to work at the Aachen Technical University, Germany, to work on solar cell efficiency optimization. During this time, he had the opportunity to be a guest-researcher at the CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique) in Toulouse, France. Later while working at Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Eugene was invited by the Japanese government to work at ETL (Electrochemical Laboratory) on the development of promising thermoelectric materials.
Eugene has introduced inter-classroom collaborations across two different courses and community service engagement, based on group projects involving students’ majors as a motivational tool. He believes in transformative learning approaches. He is a strong advocate of eco-pedagogy as a tool for developing student centered and independent learning projects, where students are responsible for their learning and are required to provide community service activities. These activities create a classroom environment without walls utilizing experiential learning with hands on real world problems by using learning communities and sharing knowledge to promote study skills, self-confidence to reduce students’ learning anxieties.
He has published more than twenty scientific publications and has been invited to present his work in national and international conferences.
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