The formation of new citizens for the 21st Century presupposes the use of methodologies that integrate it with the social space in which it is and make them extrapolate to other spaces and times, promoting their actions to the point that they are the protagonist of their success and autonomy. The active methodologies aim to value these processes of individual and collective development, social and emotional, affective, and reflective. Considering that the theme active methodologies in higher education is still something to be explored in depth, this study sought to answer the following research question: What are the main themes associated with the use of active methodologies in higher education that appear in international scientific production? Among the 40 articles analyzed, the countries that published the most up to the moment of data collection were: Spain (24) and Brazil (11), among others. In all, the publications of 8 countries were analyzed. In relation to the universities that published the most, the University of The Basque Country stood out (4). The most recurrent terms of each cluster were: teacher training, impact, strategy and flipped classroom. Considering its exploratory and descriptive character, the analyses carried out in this research allowed us to realize that the analyzed articles sought to present how the methodologies active in higher education require qualitative research that allows to deepen discussions about the use of them by teachers in higher education. This study identified a tendency for articles to approach the term flipped classroom as one of the most recurrent methodologies in the studies analyzed. The contribution of this study was the mapping and organization of publications through clusters, thanks to the use of software that enabled us to mineralize the data and then recompose the information to stratify by: countries, institutions linked to the publications, frequency of words and its diverse contexts. Finally, this research approached the theme explored by presenting that active methodologies are fundamental for the performance of teachers in higher education and that they still require formative processes that enable them to integrate these practices into their classes.