Will Schooling Ever Change?

This book is an insightful meta-narrative about schooling which explores the global natural experiment of the COVID-19 pandemic and its potential impact on school culture.
The proposed book discusses how the abrupt and somewhat forced digital transformation of schooling on a global scale (caused by the COVID-19 pandemic) did not change the educational status quo. It states that online teaching and learning failed to transform the role of the key school actors, students and teachers as well as the relationship between them, despite megatrends such as digitalisation, automation and the development of artificial intelligence. This focus text discusses why the global experience of distance education did not translate into a significant qualitative change and provides a theoretical framework which enables the reader to interpret and explain the processes that occurred during distance education, as well as understand why extraordinarily little (if nothing) has changed in school culture.
It will appeal to scholars and students from the sociology of education and from education studies, particularly those interested in school culture, innovation in education, online teaching and learning, curriculum studies and education policy.

Piotr Mikiewicz is a professor at the University of Lower Silesia in Poland. He is an author of numerous publications revolving around the concept of social capital and social effects of the educational expansion. He is also an expert at the Ministry of Education and Science in Poland as well as the Poland's representative in the OECD's International Education Surveys: PISA Governing Board, PIAAC Board of Participating Countries. Recent publications include Social capital and education - An attempt to synthesize conceptualisation arising from various theoretical origins (2021), Educationalisation and its implications for contemporary society (2020) and Socjologia edukacji. Teorie, koncepcje, poj-cia (Sociology of Education. Theories, concepts, definitions, 2016). Marta Jurczak-Morris is a Researcher and a PhD candidate at the University of Lower Silesia in Poland, at the Faculty of Applied Studies. Having worked as a teacher in highly diverse primary schools in London in the United Kingdom, she has developed her professional and academic interests around issues such as class, social justice, educational inequalities, discrimination, as well as the phenomenon of distance learning. Recent publications include Pedants vs Mondains - On the Ways in Which Young People Interact in the Schooling Process Through the Lens of Pierre Bourdieu's Theory of Habitus and Socio-Cultural Capital (2021) and The Emerging New School Culture with Its Potential Consequences in the Context of Distance Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic? (2021).

Introduction 1. Education during the time of the pandemic 2. School in its essence 3. Potential direction of change looking forward Ending: What comes next?