Institutional support for active learning: a case study in Portugal and Brazil

The labor market has demanded technical and transversal competences from graduates. In higher education, these competences are developed and/or enhanced through activities related to active learning approaches, which places the student at the center of the learning process. Much has been written the importance of active learning for students' professional development. Less has been known about the institutional strategy that enables opportunities for students to develop such competences and prepare them effectively for their professional practice. This research proposes a case study as a methodological approach, considering two universities, Portugal and Brazil. The object of study is the relationship between active learning and professional practice in the context of higher education, considering the institutional initiatives that prevail in both countries. The main objective is to analyze, from an institutional perspective, how active learning contributes to the development of competencies in the context of higher education. The data was collected first by document analysis of the strategic plans of the studied institutions, followed by interviews with institutional stakeholders in both countries. Preliminary results suggest that institutional support is fundamental, indispensable, and necessary for active learning to fulfill its role as a tool in building competences for students' professional practice. Although there is discourse on active learning as a methodology for student protagonism, in the studied institutions, its adoption is more strongly linked to individual initiatives of teachers than to robust institutional support. It is possible to identify programs and projects in which the student is the protagonist in the institutions. However, this is related to the teacher's performance and not necessarily to institutional criteria that encourage the teacher to adopt active learning strategies as the main tool in building competences for students' professional practice.