The Paradigm of Continuous Education: Approaches to Essence

Abstract

The author, analyzing the phenomenon of “continuous education,” shares her thoughts on the fact that, perhaps, for studying and understanding the needs of an innovative society, it is necessary to supplement the pedagogical and educational paradigm with the paradigm of continuous education. For this paradigm it is characteristic that the learner plays the main role with his motivation for cognition, creating his own criteria aimed at constructing the future in the face of increasing uncertainty, which contributes to the formation of a stable basis in professional activity and preparation for changes in the life process and reflection. The paradigm of continuous education changes the emphasis from pragmatic knowledge to the development of a common culture, from the historical context of the formation of scientific knowledge to modern concepts of the structure and integral content of the system of sciences. It may be about the need to move to a completely new philosophical concept of lifelong education, the goal of which must be recognized not only the education of man, but also the ability to quickly adapt to a new global economy. In conditions of high social dynamics and continuous changes in social and professional structures, the task of continuing education is not simply the elimination of functional illiteracy of the population, but the solution of problems of technological illiteracy, that is, the use of new technologies as they arise, as well as the elimination of the trans-illiteracy, i.e., the problems with using information from different sources in everyday life. The problems of creating a paradigm for lifelong learning should be the object of further, multifaceted, systemic research of an integrative, interdisciplinary nature that has recently been increasingly described through the phenomenon of “transdisciplinarity.”