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WORLD ANTHROPOLOGICAL UNION

CONGRESS 2024​

Paper

Rethinking postgraduate classroom Anthropology: a framework for successful postgraduate promotion and durable careers.

presenters

    Yvonne Zama Sibaya

    Nationality: South Africa

    Residence: South Africa

    Presence:Face to Face/ On Site

Modern classroom Anthropology faces numerous theoretical and methodological challenges in knowledge-making and problem-solving, and its responsibility as a new-age citizen factory. Anthropology, a hip major with cutting-edge concepts, prioritizes conserving knowledge through academic institutions and instructors while sacrificing exceptional student development. The post-COVID19 output of postgraduate students piques my interest. Up-close, it appears that anthropology's status is waning as a school of thought and in terms of research methods standards commensurate with students' abilities. In order to produce future qualified academics, qualitative research methodology can bring together practical innovations to social and cultural phenomena, however, this paper highlights the absence of synergies between anthropological theories as the base of classroom curricula, the practice of Anthropology and these advances. In terms of reimagined ambitions, how may the anthropological student of today become the academic and societal innovator and change agent of the future? This research highlights that institutional anthropology lacks relevance to participatory and societally agency-based inclusive learning approaches or global sustainability when viewed from the teaching and supervision lens. It suggests integrative, innovative approaches to both instruction and study that are informed by writing rigour, reading affluency, field and career shadowing and methodological grooming from the classroom. As crucial steps in postgraduate advancement during academic onboarding, it suggests cutting-edge teaching and research methodological practices, and deepened societal agency created through academic and equitableness in rapport and collaborative work, mastery of research reading, rigorous frequent critical writing, publication, career mapping, and societal engagement. The paper highlights the anthropological crisis in the age of decolonization, civic value, technology, and global social movements, urging for a shift to new learning technologies, instructional forms and hybrid classrooms; reforming Anthropology and making it more flexible in theory and practice, is necessary to diminish its canonical tendency and instructor classroom anxieties.

Keywords:

Knowledge, Research, Globality, Academic, Integration, Supervision