Challenging Formalization in Education and Beyond: Problems and Solutions for Traditional and Online Learning

Challenging Formalization in Education and Beyond addresses the effects of today’s attempts to organize knowledge, processes, and performance in education, particularly in its ever-growing digital environments. As on-site, blended, and fully online learning become deeply interdependent, secondary and higher education managers and instructors who seek to integrate, apply, and teach within these formats using standardized rules, assessments, algorithms, and accountability structures may be doing unintended harm to their students. Focusing on students’ performance, health, cognition, behavior, and learning outcomes, this book analyses how current trends, methods, and policies in formalization can be challenged and corrected to ensure high-quality education. Scholars, educators, administrators, and designers of traditional, asynchronous, precision, automated, and micro-learning formats will come away with new insights and pragmatic solutions for engaging students in more active, participatory, and creative activities.

Peter Serdyukov is a Professor in the Department of Teacher Education at National University, USA.