The Impacts of Adopting Active Methods in the Performance of Accounting Students at a Higher Education Institution in the State of Minas Gerais

The scientific community has discussed a reformulation in education in order to meet new goals in the learning processes. It is a challenge for universities to modify their social role by adding new teaching methods in their undergraduate programs to fit into this current context. The motivation of this study is to verify if the adoption of active teaching methods in the Accounting course at a private Higher Education Institution located in the region of the Zona da Mata, State of Minas Gerais, contributed to the performance of its students. In this research, performance is characterized at the improvement in students' grades. The active methods, in response to this educational reformulation, are concerned with preparing a critical student, capable of acting in the contemporary market, subject to constant changes. The study period covers the years between 2011 and 2014. We sought to answer the following question: Is there an impact on the performance of accounting students after the implementation of active methods at the HEI investigated? To test the proposed hypothesis, we used Student's T test and regression methods. The analyzed data were collected from documents provided by the institution's employees. The results show that there is evidence that the use of active methods in the accounting course contributed to the students' performance in the period studied