Investigating Active Education at the University: The Perspectives and Challenges from Faculty Member's Viewpoints

The aim of this study is to identify the perspectives and challenges in active education from the viewpoints of faculty member. The research was done through a qualitative and phenomenological approach. Participants in this study included 25 faculty members of Humanities Faculty of Tehran University; they were selected by purposeful sampling method and by selection of students by the training observation form. In this research, the data gathering instrument was a qualitative interview including open and standard questions; and the data were analyzed and classified according to the analytical and interpretive approaches of Strauss and Glaser's underlying theory. By examining the response phrases and after analyzing, interpreting and classifying, six categories were obtained: the description of education, the role of the teacher in teaching, the response to new methods, the trend towards new methods, and the challenges facing new methods and the necessary reforms to promote education. From the perspective of active education, active teaching professors focused on the interaction between the teacher and the student, while traditional method professors described active education based on the central role of the teacher in the classroom. Traditional professors highlighted the necessity of motivated and interested students for employing proactive methods and they mentioned lack of students’ readiness as the main reason for their unwillingness for using these methods. But professors of active education evaluated the changes made by education and interactive and they described two-way education as a desirable change of education to more activating and engage students in the educational process. Traditional professors mainly emphasized the disadvantages barriers of this active education, which they explained based on the central role of the teacher and his main role in the transferring content as much as possible. While the professors of active education identified four classes of teacher-related challenges, a training curriculum, an evaluation system and a challenge to the education structure and organization. Both groups of professors were common in expressing the necessary reforms to promote education, which is in four dimensions: the transformation of attitude towards education, structural reforms of higher education to facilitate active education, faculty empowerment and content review and evaluation methods adapted to the new educational approach.