Community education - the context of contemporary changes and challenges

Social education in the broad sense of the term is one of the planes on which the description and interpretation of what we call education in general is carried out, and it happens both on the basis of developed theory and implemented practice. Social pedagogy evolving today is a pedagogical sub-field that most fully engages in these issues. The concept of community education is the one most discussed today on its basis, addressing issues of social education. To generalise, this concept is understood today as the informal education of children, adolescents and adults, an education related to satisfying the needs of specific local communities. This perspective of educational and environment impacts on humans, in the context of their local presence, allows simultaneously different possible levels of interpretation in social pedagogy. One can identify here such categories as social space, a small homeland, social capital, or the category of place. All of these concepts emerge together from certain ways of understanding the environment and educational environment. In connection with social education many issues occur today involving both children, adolescents and adults, as well as school, the family and other com­munities. These are the areas of challenges and many 'new' problems for con­temporary educational practice.