How is student-centred learning translated within the European Higher Education Area?

One of the key aims of the Bologna Process has been to stimulate the convergence of European higher education systems through agreed-upon standards and the comparability of key characteristics and dimensions. Since 2015, student-centred learning (SCL) has become more prominently launched as a key feature of the Bologna Process and as a concept aimed at further enhancing convergence between systems and institutions in Europe. However, as the concept can be interpreted in various ways, the ambition of this article is to investigate whether SCL has evolved as a concept able to align diverse European higher education systems and institutions. Based on a scoping literature review (2015–2024) covering all countries that are members of the European Higher Education Area, we find that SCL has become an important frame and point of reference for new teaching and learning designs in classroom settings. However, new teaching designs often maintain traditional roles between teachers and students. As such, SCL can be said to stimulate symbolic convergence, although there are few indications that it contributes to driving more radical transformations of teaching and learning processes in higher education.