Active Learning in Higher Education: Inheriting Pasts and Emerging Futures

This paper examines active learning from a temporal perspective, reflecting on its historical influences, trajectories and future directions emerging in research. Rather than treating active learning as a fixed pedagogical approach, the paper situates it within longer educational traditions and ongoing debates about teaching and learning. Drawing on research in higher education, the paper discusses how active learning has been shaped by changing ontologies, relationships and understandings of activity and student participation. The paper concludes by identifying three interrelated matters of concern for future research on active learning: the conceptualisation of purposeful activity beyond mere “being active,” questions of agency and authorship and human–AI entanglements, and the need for critically curious approaches to imagining and designing futures of active learning.