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 relation-
ship between them, despite megatrends such as digitalisation, auto-
mation 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 theoret-
ical framework which enables the reader to interpret and explain the

processes that occurred during distance education, as well as under-
stand why extraordinarily little (if nothing) has changed in school

culture.

It will appeal to scholars and students from the sociology of edu-
cation and from education studies, particularly those interested in

school culture, innovation in education, online teaching and learning,
curriculum studies and education policy.