The paper intends to show how the question of the teaching practice groundworks is a top priority in a discussion about the teacher's failures, incoherences and dissatisfactions in his daily work. Such groundworks are considered as the starting point for an analysis of the present teaching. Misunderstandings and ambiguities of the teaching practice and the persistence of characteristics of traditional pedagogy are pointed out, together with its assumptions and implications for the students' development and learning as well. At the end, Piagetian psychological and epistemological principles on which an active pedagogy may be founded are presented along with some cues for its effectiveness in practice, intending to serve the educational aim of "development of the learner's potentialities" according to new basis.
active pedagogy; traditional teaching; teaching practice groundworks; principles of Piagetian theory