Trends that shape European higher education policies in recent years, stress  the importance of HE systems to contribute to the new workforce to 21st century able to deal with rapid changes, open to novelty, skilled in information analysis, problem solving, effective communication and critical reflection on professional practice (Brennan, Enders, Musselin, Teichler, & Välimaa, 2008),and able to learn along their lives.

Five main ideas frame the challenges to HE space and mission: (1) the idea that HE must be accountable to society; (2) the need to attracting more students; (3) the awareness that there is no university without science (Nowothy et al.,2001);  (4) that HE curricula must be organized to provide teaching and learning approaches more cooperative and contextualized, and (5) that improving teaching has become an important European-wide issue (European Commission 2013).

More and more, open HE access policies bring into Universities students that were usually out of this education level. As stated by Deem (2015) and  as a  consequence, “Governments and higher educational institutions, not just in the European Higher Education Area but worldwide, have become very interested in how students learn, how they should be taught and how they can be assessed” (Deem, 2015, 266) due to this widening socio-economic access to universities. This is also a very important target to accomplish among Portuguese system (and not only) as it ensures a larger “critical mass” into societies, and contributes to deepen the “knowledge society” concept. However this political program must be followed by a reflection on the conditions that HE Institutions raise to integrate and promote effectively all students achievement and commitment. This is also a challenge to HE curricula. In fact, if ‘knowledge society’ concept and need is largely consensual, as a goal to HE systems, Institutions must be more students’ learning oriented and that must shape curricula organization and development. The growing importance of  pedagogical concerns within Academia, the focus on learning, the strengthening of the teacher-student and student-student interactions, the inclusion of innovative and collaborative work strategies and learning based on autonomy and reflection (Nóvoa, 2011) are clear signs of higher education changes. Therefore, looking for innovative strategies that improve learning, promote students autonomy and deepen knowledge to ensure curriculum development is an urgent task to higher educational institutions.

The debates are an example of pedagogical strategy that implies a greater participation of students because it assumes that they are active and critical elements in the acquisition of knowledge that the University proposes them. Also it implies that they have opportunity to use their argumentative skills (Mouraz et al., 2014). The principal purpose of this paper is to characterize the uses of debate for learning purposes as they are put into practice in Academia.

According to this purpose were chosen the following specific objectives:

• Identify aims underlying debate uses within HE courses. 
• Characterize the teaching work associated with the implementation of the debates’ methodology in the classroom;

Study the students ' adherence to methodology.

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