Paper short abstract:

Europeanization has shaped higher education at a breathtaking pace during the last years. Social Anthropologists around Europe adopted the Bologna reform and the ever-changing national profiles of teaching and learning. Has critical thinking in teaching and learning survived during that process or has it been sacrificed to pragmatism?

Paper long abstract:

During the last ten years, the Teaching and Learning Network has focused its activities on the analysis and the interpretation of the changes taking place in the different nationalities and regions of the European Higher Education. In the aftermath of the 1989 political movements, social anthropologists got to know each other and started to discuss their radically different ideas of the scope of the discipline and the practices of teaching and learning. This was especially true for the divide between - generally speaking - East and West as well as South and North. It was felt that even though Europe is divided by various national traditions, some of them dominate the discipline internationally in a powerful and hegemonic way; they are said to set standards for publication, for teaching and learning outcomes and performances in classrooms and conferences.

From my experience as TAN network coordinator, European teaching and learning traditions today still differ enormously. It is not quite clear if current trends especially in the Anglo-Saxon anthropology can be applied everywhere. It seems to be more likely, that each national or regional tradition has to adapt to the international scholarly environment on the basis of their own set of rules and teaching and learning traditions. For example, it is not decided yet if critical thinking is everywhere the highest esteemed value. After standardizing the discipline through Bologna, it is time to critically assess and listen closely to our respective neighbors' vision of anthropology.