THE TEACHING-LEARNING PROCESS FOR ADMINISTRATION CLASSES IN HETEROGENEOUS CONDITIONS: STUDENTS’ AND TEACHERS’ PERCEPTIONS

Abstract

The main goal of this article is to describe, from the points of view of teachers and students, a teaching experience from the “Introduction to Administration” class attended by a heterogeneous group of students from Engineering, Nutrition, Law and other courses. The class structure comprises lectures and small group based lessons coordinated by monitors that complement the lecture content in an encouraging environment for dialogue and exchanging experiences. The article adopts the concepts of meaningful learning and interaction (moreira, 1999; ausubel, 1982) as a theoretical framework and the use of aesthetic resources to improve learning (davel et al., 2004; fischer, 2005). A survey was conducted and the resulting data quantitatively and qualitatively analyzed to gauge the students’ and teachers’ perception of the class. It was observed that the students’ mixed course background posed a significant challenge, but also offered several important learning opportunities. This teaching format can, therefore, serve as a basis for new experiments and help to reflect on the need to re-structure the teaching process for Administration and the training of lecturers in the field, as suggested by some authors.