The construct of active learning permeates undergraduate education in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM), but despite its prevalence, the construct means different things to different people, groups, and STEM domains. To better understand active learning, we constructed this review through an innovative interdisciplinary collaboration involving research teams from psychology and discipline-based education research (DBER). Our collaboration examined active learning from two different perspectives (i.e., psychology and DBER) and surveyed the current landscape of undergraduate STEM instructional practices related to the modes of active learning and traditional lecture. On that basis, we concluded that active learning—which is commonly used to communicate an alternative to lecture and does serve a purpose in higher education classroom practice—is an umbrella term that is not particularly useful in advancing research on learning. To clarify, we synthesized a working definition of active learning that operates within an elaborative framework, which we call the construction-of-understanding ecosystem. A cornerstone of this framework is that undergraduate learners should be active agents during instruction and that the social construction of meaning plays an important role for many learners, above and beyond their individual cognitive construction of knowledge. Our proposed framework offers a coherent and actionable concept of active learning with the aim of advancing future research and practice in undergraduate STEM education.

主动学习的结构渗透到科学，技术，工程和数学（STEM）的本科教育中，但尽管盛行，但对不同的人，群体和STEM领域而言却意味着不同的事物。为了更好地理解主动学习，我们通过创新性的跨学科合作构建了本评价，涉及心理学和基于学科的教育研究（DBER）的研究团队。我们的合作从两种不同的角度（即心理学和DBER）研究了主动学习，并调查了与主动学习和传统授课模式相关的本科STEM教学实践的现状。在此基础上，我们得出的结论是，主动学习（通常用于交流替代演讲的方法，确实在高等教育课堂实践中达到了目的）是一个总括性术语，对推进学习研究并不是特别有用。为了明确起见，我们综合了主动学习的有效定义，该定义在详尽的框架内运作，我们称其为建筑的认识生态系统。该框架的基础是，在教学过程中，本科生应该成为积极的推动者，意义的社会建构对于许多学习者而言，除了其个人认知的建构之外，都起着重要的作用。我们提出的框架提供了一个一致且可操作的主动学习概念，目的是推进本科STEM教育的未来研究和实践。