Change laboratory: a method for understating the crisis between public university and society

The purpose of this article is to analyze if a method of developmental intervention helps the professionals of the activities in interinstitutional crises to form a historical understanding of the problems faced and to create solutions for them. We present a method called Change Laboratory (CL), inspired by the Theory of Historical-Cultural Activity (THCA). It is illustrated with an empirical case of intervention where the historical genesis and the contradictions that led to the crisis in the collaborative relationship between a public university and an educational health center were identified, between 2013 and 2015. Data obtained from records made during the intervention as well as interviews and comments from the participants were used for the study. As a result, the participants analyzed their activities historically and designed the future collaboration activity aimed at a solution to the crisis, within the scope of possible academic-pedagogical relations linked to the Brazilian National Health System (SUS). The analysis suggests contradictions in the objects of health care and education activities that may be at the heart of the problematic relationship among institutions that need to develop activities collaboratively. The CL as a methodology of developmental intervention integrates diagnosis, learning, the participants' protagonism and the creation of solutions as part of the same process.