AN INTEGRATIVE INTERPRETATION OF PERSONAL AND CONTEXTUAL FACTORS OF STUDENTS’ RESISTANCE TO ACTIVE LEARNING AND TEACHING STRATEGIES

Active Learning is a constructivist approach based on the student-centred teaching perspective, but even though it is a method useful for promoting student engagement, for supporting students in the development of their abilities, for enhancing their reflection on their ways of learning, and for developing autonomous control of their own learning process, students’ resistance seems to be a common reaction in the contexts where it is used. The purpose of this paper is to present an integrative interpretation of students’ resistance to active learning based on the ways in which students demonstrate their resistance to it, and the strategies that teachers can use to counteract this resistance. Based on this new interpretation, the practical implications are presented: the creation of an ecological didactic system; the importance for teachers to be well prepared for the reasons causing students’ resistance and the use of an ecological teaching strategy for overcoming it, a strategy which lets them make reasonable pedagogical choices and avoid giving up on the method’s implementation