BETWEEN LECTURE AND PARTICIPATION: TENSIONS OF PEDAGOGICAL INNOVATION IN MANAGEMENT EDUCATION
Management education combines technical, social, ethical, and analytical knowledge in teaching and learning processes marked by diverse teaching practices. This article analyzes how students in an undergraduate Management program perceive the relationships among teaching methodologies, assessment, feedback, and theory-practice integration, as well as the tensions these perceptions reveal about pedagogical innovation. The qualitative, exploratory, and descriptive research adopted a case study in a federal higher education institution. Documentary analysis used the 2019 Pedagogical Course Project as the main curricular reference and the 2024 update as a prospective normative context; empirical evidence comprised ten semi-structured interviews with students who had completed at least 50% of the program workload. Content analysis combined deductive and inductive coding in a 44-code codebook. The results were reorganized into three tensions: lecture and active experimentation; grade and formative feedback; academic content and professional experience. The accounts indicated coexistence among oral lectures, teaching cases, projects, debates, and gamification strategies, with different levels of continuity across course units. Assessment criteria and feedback also varied, while professional experiences were associated with subject area, teacher mediation, study schedule, and participation conditions. The study concludes that, in the case examined, pedagogical innovation has a relational character: its expression depends on coherence among objectives, teacher mediation, student activity, criteria, feedback, and contextual application. The article provides an interpretive synthesis for planning teaching and learning processes.