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Paper short abstract:

Students don't just attend their teachers' lectures, but they also silently conduct participant observation. Yet, are teachers willing to accept and integrate this as part of an academic exercise in anthropology? What dilemmas emerge from the duality of being a teacher or student and anthropologist?

Paper long abstract:

Anthropologists are given an additional role to fulfill in educational contexts besides their own. Whether it is to be a teacher or a student, this implies a new adaptation to the tasks ahead. After having taught Social Sciences for two years I decided to go back and continue studying Anthropology. Quickly I saw difficulties in assuming my role as a student, and couldn't let go of my previous roles as a teacher or Anthropologist. As we went back to the basics of empirical research, I found myself being aware of the participant observation I conducted weekly throughout the lectures. This duality allowed me to both see from the veranda and walk the field of how anthropology was being taught to us. This participant observation was an opportunity to identify didactics used in the seminars and to address this in conversations with teachers. As a former teacher, I tried to exercise empathy toward the endeavor and understand the formative structure behind the modules and classes. As a student, I lived and performed the planned learning curricula and experienced the social, cultural, and political characteristics of the educational system and higher education institutions of Germany, in contrast to those of my country of origin, which I tried to reflect on using autoethnography. Last, I reflect on the methodology I conducted and the ethical aspects of conducting anthropological research on educational settings and institutions.