TOPICALITY OF INFORMAL EDUCATION IN THE CONTEXT OF CONTINUING EDUCATION

Abstract

This article deals with informal education as an element of an integral continuous educational system with an internal complex structure. The aim of the article is to substantiate the topicality of informal education in the context of continuing adult education (formal, non-formal and informal education). The article presents a comparative description of continuing education types and takes into account legal documents and author's position. The author comes to the conclusion about the obvious advantages of informal education over formal and informal education which are manifested in the orientation to self-realization, focused on the personal increment of adult learners and the further management of their own educational space, taking into account personal interests, desires, needs, opportunities, interpersonal interaction that saturates the socio-cultural environment,which in general enriches formal and informal education. Based on the research of A.V. Okereshko, Patrick Penland (Pittsburgh) this article presents the reasons for choosing adult self-learning to formal education. The author conducted etymological studies of the origin of the notion "informal education" and to analyze the topicality the author conducted a content analysis of modern Russian and foreign scientific articles, monographs, texts of doctoral and master's theses, materials of scientific-practical conferences, published in the period from 2000 to 2018 in the largest digital libraries “eLIBRARY.RU” and “CYBERLENINKA”. The chosen semantic units were the notions "informal education/ informal education/ informal learning". The author comes to the conclusion that the combination of all three types of education (formal, non-formal and informal) in the system of continuing education allows to provide a mobile reorientation of the education system to prepare a person for life with changing conditions and encourage him to search for new approaches to its qualitative change.