5th Andragogical Congress
The Institute of Pedagogy and Psychology at the University of Wrocław and the Department of Adult Education and Cultural Studies invite you to the 5th Andragogical Congress that will take place on 20-21 October 2026, under the theme “Uczenie się dorosłych w ponowoczesnym świecie – nowe możliwości, nowe zadania, nowe bariery” (Adult Learning in the Postmodern World – new opportunities, new tasks, new barriers.
Registration for participants is available online through the REGISTRATION FORM and is open until the 20th of June 2026.
The organisers of the 5th Andragogical Congress:
“Four years have passed since the last Andragogical Congress. Observing the technological and social changes that keep on happening in the modern world, it just seems like time goes faster. According to Stanisław Lem’s diagnoses from his short story called “Qatar”, one could say that this is a world in which yesterday’s extraordinary becomes today’s banality and today’s extreme becomes tomorrow’s norm. Our reality keeps on taking on the prefigurative features described years ago by Margaret Mead, which is not without impact on the emerging tasks for adult education.
Contemporary analyses of culture, starting with a concept of participatory culture, in which young generations become creators and co-organisers of knowledge flow, through Hartmut Rosa’s approach to acceleration culture, which highlights the growing dynamics of social and technological change, to Gilles Lipovetsky’s theory of hypermodernity, which shows the flow of changes and the individualisation of life styles, since the education of adults functions in constantly changing conditions. Knowledge is ageing rapidly, there occur previously unknown professional and social fields and to be able to understand them properly and gain the skills you need at least a few years.
Peter Jarvis points out that the process of learning is located between people’s biographies and the sociocultural space in which they live and their experience is shaped. However, today the space is different, the places where you can gain experience is different, as well as the places where adults learn are different. Knud Illeris notes that modern adults learn in an environment of multi-directional influx of stimuli, information overload and the need for constant adaptation, which shifts an emphasis from institutional learning to distributed, situational and rooted in everyday practices. In the context of challenges, in addition to the well-known and defined areas of andragogical reflection, new ones are emerging that require research and description. Given the political and economic events, that took place in recent years, both locally and globally, there is no way not to notice the growing role of od adult education in all its dimensions.
We hope that the 5th Andragogical Congress, organised this time by the Department of Adult Education and Cultural Studies of the Institute of Pedagogy of the University of Wrocław in co-operation with the Academic Society will become a place of research presenting conducted in various academic centres and for experience exchanging in andragogical explorations of social reality”
Areas of debate:
- New perspectives and issues of adult education theory
- Learning for a lifetime and identity of an adult
- Adulthood as an area of andragogical reflection
- The aging society as an area of research and andragogical practice
- Culture as a space for adult education
- Citizen education and social adult participation
- Professional competence and labour market, as a task area of adult education
- Adult education in the ecological and climate changes
- Conflicts and migrations as a task area of adult education
- Digital technologies and artificial intelligence in adult learning
Conference organising committee:
dr Joanna Golonka-Legut (conference secretary)
dr Marek Podgórny
mgr Kornelia Kordiak (conference secretary)
mgr Piotr Maciaszek
Contact: zjazd.andragogiczny@uwr.edu.pl
You can find more information about the 5th Andragogical Congress on the website.
Translated by Nikola Dawidowicz (student of English Studies at the University of Wrocław) as part of the translation practice.
Date of publication: 30.04.2026
Added by: MJ
