Abstract:
We aim at demonstrating how methodologies inspired by non-directive pedagogical assumptions - advertised by the Ministry of Health as innovative for nursing schools - lose their inventiveness and originality, if interpreted historically. We analyzed the main initiatives for change and their assumptions by taking specific documents as our source - ones that redirect the formation of health professionals in Brazil. Assumptions, hereby summarized, were: significant learning, teacher-facilitator, learning how to learn, active learning and learning through problems. Such pedagogical principles can be regarded as innovative only in the educational contexts where they were produced early last century. When it comes to Healthcare, it is not a novelty either, because preventive healthcare studies have defended both curricular readjustment and the incorporation of active methodologies in nursing school ever since 1950.
Key words:
Higher education in health; Active methodologies; Non-directive pedagogy approaches