Use of Participatory Methodologies in Pedagogical Practices of School System

Abstract

Participatory methodologies are aimed at achieving active learning through collective activities and discussion of ideas and experiences between teachers and students. The purpose of this study was to learn about teachers’ notions of participatory methodologies at the conceptual, procedural, and attitudinal level. We conducted a descriptive, cross-sectional, and comparative study. A KPSI questionnaire on didactic learning strategies was applied to 81 elementary and secondary school teachers in the Biobío region of Chile. For the statistical analysis, we used the ANOVA test for repeated measures and the Student’s t test to determine whether there were significant differences between the three levels of the questionnaire (conceptual, procedural, and attitudinal). The inferential analysis determined that there are statistically significant differences between the means for the conceptual and procedural levels, and between the means for the procedural and attitudinal levels. The difference implied that the procedural level was significantly better than the conceptual and attitudinal levels. The results suggest a lack of implementation of participatory methodologies in the classroom as a consequence of the traditional teaching-learning model, resistance to pedagogical change, and initial teacher training, factors that hinder the use of participatory methodologies in the classroom.