Teachers face situations that are difficult to solve, which affect their practices in the classroom. Teachers´ability to face problematic situations been related to educators' adaptive and metacognitive capacity. This study aimed to contrast the recent literature on classroom problems with reports from Chilean teachers regarding what they mean today as critical situations in the classroom. The major problems with the highest prevalence were categorized based on a literature review. Subsequently, teachers from three educational levels (pre-school, primary and secondary) were asked to relate situations in which they had experienced a crisis in their profession. After a filtering based on the relevance and textual richness present, the stories (n=145) were subjected to a thematic analysis and contrasted with the categories obtained from the reviewed literature. The results show a low proportion of problems associated with learning management in the classroom and, on the other hand, a high proportion of behavioral problems in students focused on situations of aggression towards the teacher. These conclusions are discussed to reconsider the concept of "classroom problem situations" and, based on this, questioning the role of teacher training in the development of skills for the management of authentic problem situations.

This paper describes an experience based on the use of an active method in which students of a basic physics course prepare multiple choice questions (MCQs) to prepare for exams in the subject. The objective of the research was to provide the students with a method that would enhance their desire to learn physics, and consequently lead to an improvement in their meaningful learning. The participants were 57 first-year students from various engineering degrees. The quasi-experimental design with pre- and post-tests and a control group is described. The results showed that students who use the method of generating MCQs to prepare exams sometimes improve their learning significantly in comparison with the control group. The method also provides a new way to detect students' misconceptions about the concepts covered in class, which thus allows the evolution of their knowledge to be evaluated. Finally, it should be noted that the students valued the method used positively.