O impacto das discrepâncias socioeconômicas no desempenho acadêmico: uma comparação entre metodologia ativa e tradicional

Abstract

Low-income students have access to universities through affirmative action programs, FIES (Student Financing Fund), or scholarships from the program “Universidade para Todos”. These policies have expanded the population access to higher education, resulting in students from different socio-economic backgrounds. With the shift from traditional teaching to active learning methodologies, it becomes necessary to understand the extent to which these socio-economic disparities impact students' performance in the method’s practices. This work aimes to compare active and traditional teaching methodologies among students with different socio-economic profiles, with or without access to the internet, in both public and private universities. Two hundred and four students participated in the research, divided into two groups subjected to active and traditional teaching methodologies. Subsequently, the students took a knowledge test and answered a socio-economic questionnaire to identify potential variables that may affect learning through these methodologies. Traditional teaching methodology led to better performance among students in private higher education institutions (HEIs), with no statistically significant difference in the type of methodology used for students in public HEIs. Access to the internet had an impact on students subjected to active teaching methodology, but the same phenomenon was not observed in the traditional teaching methodology group. We conclude that internet access is important for the effectiveness of active teaching methodology, with no impact on traditional teaching methodology. Students from private HEIs performed better in the traditional methodology, but there was no difference between active and traditional methodologies for students in public HEIs.