The Human and Intellectual Cost of High Performance Schooling: On the Necessity of Person-centred Education

In this book, Michael Fielding develops a searching critique of key elements of education policy and practice, including personalization, target-setting, impact, competition, empowerment, inspection and accountability, and leadership and management. He goes beyond critique to offer positive alternatives, not only to these topics, but also others, such as the challenges and prospects of collaborative work between teachers and other professionals and stakeholders in a range of fields, the nature of community, person-centered education, and the place and possibility of radical approaches to education and schooling within the state sector. This book goes to the heart of dilemmas that have not only faced western democratic societies in one form or another for well over the past 100 years, but that are likely to continue to test our resolve and our imaginative resources for an equivalent amount of time in the future.

Michael Fielding is Professor of Education at the University of Sussex.