To think and reflect, to judge and critique, to engage and explore; and to invent. This is how I would define active learning. The concept we all believe in, but we try to avoid applying it. But who is ‘WE’? A question we all should reflect on. Is it the students or the teachers? NO. The truth is, it’s neither. The real issue lies in the system, the way education is structured, managed and measured. A system more concerned with standardised testing than meaningful understanding. A system that values compliance with regulations over curiosity. A system built on the old belief that “one size fits all”, as if every student learns the same way, at the same pace, under the same circumstances and using the same tools. A system that often views Active Learning as a luxury, not a necessity.
Unfortunately, we are trapped in a framework that discourages innovation, punishes mistakes and rewards “obedience” over active participation. And until we question that framework, until we shift the focus from controlling learning to enabling it, active learning will remain an ideal more often preached than practiced.
If we truly believe in active learning, we must be willing to redesign the whole framework. We need to shift from teaching to the test to teaching for understanding, applying, growing and learning, from content coverage to deep cognitive engagement, from teachers as authority to teachers as facilitators, from students as obedient listeners to students as “active” listeners, leading and controlling their own path of learning and discovery. And yeah, from a top-down to a bottom-up system. Because, nah, we don’t need more decisions made in some office. We need classrooms where the ideas rise from the bottom, from the students.
We need to stop asking “How can we fit active learning into this system?” and start asking, “What kind of system would make active learning the default, not the ideal exception?” Active Learning is not a technique. It is a mindset. It is the belief that learning is not about memorising. It is about giving students not just a voice in the classroom, but a role in shaping their learning path.
We all must reflect on the roles we play and the systems we support. Not to assign blame, but to take responsibility. Because until we do that, active learning will remain a beautiful idea we talk about, while quietly continuing with business as usual. And our students will continue waiting for the kind of learning we promised, but never truly delivered.
So, where do we begin? With a checklist? A policy change? A three-hour workshop where everyone nods enthusiastically, then goes back to doing exactly what they’ve always been doing? Active learning doesn’t need new slogans. It takes courage. The courage to let go of control, to embrace the messy, unpredictable nature of real learning. The courage to let students fail, not to punish them, but to let them learn how to stand back up.
It might not be attractive. It might not always be efficient. But it is real. And maybe that’s what scares us the most, that real learning isn’t something we can standardise, schedule, or measure with a neat rubric, the one that was written like 50 years ago and nobody’s bothered to update since. Learning is human, humanising and humanistic. And humans, inconveniently, are complicated beings.
So, let’s complicate the system a little. Let’s add more questions than answers, more ambiguity than certainty, more mystery than clarity. Because the future is not waiting for them to memorise, it’s waiting for them to think, reflect, critique, explore, discover, imagine, adapt, create, innovate, collaborate and keep learning long after the test is over.
That future deserves more than silent rows and obedient note-takers. It deserves thinkers and ambiguity seekers, for within ambiguity lies wonder and creation. And they deserve classrooms that let them become just that.
Ahmed Al Saadi
The writer is an SQU student
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