ACTIVE METHODOLOGIES: IN SEARCH OF A CHARACTERIZATION AND DEFINITION

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Active Methodologies (AMs) are a set of pedagogical alternatives aimed at facilitating student learning and/or providing a critical and problematizing education of reality by shifting the student to the center of the knowledge construction process. We conducted a bibliographic research on scientific articles about the topic "Active Methodologies," selected from the CAPES periodicals portal. The purpose of this study is to present a general characterization of the AMs identified in the literature, considering an analysis of the definitions of AMs used by the authors, the identification of the main theoretical and epistemological frameworks employed to support these methodologies, and an analysis of the different methodologies considered in the literature as AMs. In this context, we came to a definition of active methodologies, which is part of this article. Our results indicate that there has been an increase in research on AMs in recent years, with a prevalence of research in the Health area, and that some articles are based on the ideas of established theorists such as Freire, Dewey, Piaget, and Ausubel. We identified a diversity of different active methodologies among the 24 methodologies considered active by the authors present in our sample. In general, active methodologies share the common characteristics of student protagonism and education from a critical perspective.