CONCEPTUAL CHALLENGES IN UNDERSTANDING INNOVATIVE EDUCATION IN ORGANIZATIONAL CONTEXT

Abstract

The paper suggests shifts in educational thinking about adult and continuing education practices including: goal setting, nature of the learner, character of education, and its elements including the sources in the educational process, evaluation of its outcomes, and social (micro-social) role of education. The author explores innovative vs. conventional adult learning, and introduces several new approaches to adult education. Several conceptual challenges (paradoxes) are considered that do not fit the traditional educationalist’s thinking. The conceptual shifts are explored as cognitive gaps, leading to insights about the nature of adult education, and pragmatic changes in shaping education to transform individual and collective experience.

Keywords

• adult and continuing education
• innovative education
• collective learner
• transformative education