The author introduces us to the topics of the subsequent volumes of "Chowanna", which has expanded its Scientific Council. The Council's task is to maintain a high scientific level of the texts published therein and to strive to enrich their subject matter with issues that concern contemporary pedagogy. The editorial board has decided that "Chowanna" should become a nationwide forum for the exchange of pedagogical ideas about the postmodern social and cultural reality in Poland. Outstanding representatives of various subdisciplines in pedagogy, originating from several academic centers in the country, have been invited to write texts under the general title "Educational Sciences in the Postmodern World".

The aim of this article is to introduce the reader to the issues surrounding postmodernism—a cultural phenomenon whose essence eludes traditional formulations and structures—and its influence on the pedagogical sciences. For some, it is a term describing phenomena born out of a crisis in the culture of civilization; for others, it is the designation of a way of thinking about the world that encompasses not only the issues of philosophy, art, or science, but also the social phenomena that shape mass culture. In the 1980s, it became a subject of discussion not only in aesthetics and philosophy but also in the study of science, theology, law, ethics, and pedagogy. It is therefore worth considering whether postmodern discourse can provide grounds for changes in education and upbringing in our country. Equally interesting is the extent to which postmodern discourses can inspire or provoke both theoretical developments and transformative educational practice. Does postmodernism as a new phenomenon at the threshold of the 21st century open up pedagogy to new, future possibilities, or does it perhaps itself become, in relation to its past achievements, a historical, evaluative perspective? It is extremely difficult to identify a direct connection between education and postmodernism. This discourse is still reluctantly subjected to metatheoretical analysis within the field of educational sciences, particularly with regard to its practical applications. Not all of the original and most important works by representatives of this movement have yet been translated into Polish, and there is already a negative reaction to their existing reconstructions, summaries, or local adaptations. Thus, there is no doubt that in our country’s educational policy—even if elements of postmodern thought or practice have appeared—they have certainly not emerged through the efforts of philosophically and pedagogically enlightened representatives among successive governing groups (if one can speak of any such enlightenment at all).

The aim of the article is to present selected contemporary cultural changes and to discuss the implications they (potentially) bring for educational theory and practice. The author is aware that he is describing only one of the “worlds surrounding us,” while omitting others (for example, the world of those young people who embrace a “liberal version of success” and treat life merely as a ladder to climb). The author is therefore conscious of a certain arbitrariness and “partiality” in my narrative and does not claim that it is “true,” “superior to others,” or “final.” However, adopting a different analytical perspective would yield different research results (Melosik, 1996, p. 59). The cultural tendencies described are, from a pedagogical point of view, very important and constitute one of the most significant “challenges” for contemporary educational sciences. It seeks “adequate education,” both in theory and practice—one that exerts a real influence on the younger generation and can serve as a source of social change. In this context, “adequacy” means nothing other than being “sensitive” to the reality surrounding us and its transformations, as well as being open to new proposals regarding the understanding, explanation, and description of the world, and to new ideas. This, in turn, implies a constant readiness to relinquish established habits of thinking and to question one’s own “conceptual schemas.” There is no doubt that the world in which we live at the turn of centuries (and millennia) is entirely different from the one we remember from our childhood. The collapse of the Great Metanarrative of socialism, the introduction of political democracy and the free market, as well as the obvious invasion of Western popular culture and consumerist ideology, have fundamentally altered the socio-cultural conditions to which education and pedagogy (both as theory and practice) should respond. Reality is no longer monolithic and unambiguous; it is becoming heterogeneous and fragmented—full of thousands of “small,” conflicting narratives. It is difficult to navigate and describe, and even more challenging to answer the questions: “How should we be?”, “In what way should we live?”, and “How should we educate?” And yet—as educators—we must tackle these issues because they lie at the very core of pedagogy as both theory and practice.

The main thesis of the article can be succinctly summarized as follows: the foundation for transmitting the cultural heritage of the uniting states of Europe consists of the communal values, referred to on a continental scale as "Europeanity" and, with regard to the characteristics of our nation, as "Polishness." This thesis implies an answer to the following questions: 1. What is meant by “Europeanity” and “Polishness,” what communal values do they comprise, and why do these values form an essential common ground for uniting nations? 2. What educational messages can be derived from this understanding of Europeanity and Polishness? These questions appear significant in light of both ongoing civilizational transformations and the educational challenges caused by the many tensions accompanying political transformation and globalization. Education, after all, should be treated as a process of integrating the heritage of the past in order to prepare for life in the times ahead—a process of co-creating the future in the name of the ideals embraced.

The article addresses the issues of integration and conflict in contemporary pluralistic societies. These societies are changeable and dynamic, placing an emphasis on integration and consensus while at the same time focusing on divisive and conflicting aspects, as well as contradictions between needs or interests. Hence, it is often noted that conflict is an inherent feature of society and, under certain conditions, serves a positive function, especially when it is unable to tear apart the “social fabric” that unites the cultural community. Functionalists downplay the significance of change, whereas conflict theorists highlight it. The former point positively to social arrangements—structures—while the latter seek out and display winners and losers (including the culturally rich and the culturally poor). In this context, educational efforts play an essential role in recognizing possibilities and fostering an awareness of peaceful resolution to political and economic issues by highlighting patterns of interaction, dialogue, negotiation-based solutions, cooperation, and integration.

The article addresses the issue of cultural education in the context of contemporary social phenomena, where the human being is seen as an autonomous individual and their life holds the highest value. Regardless of whether a person is influenced by education and of what kind it may be, they participate in culture. However, they tend to choose the levels and forms that do not require intellectual engagement, often described by researchers as passive. Participation then involves an unconscious adherence to the norms and cultural patterns prevalent at a given time, typically from the so-called mass level, although it may involve physical activity or, to some extent, emotional engagement. Participation limited to this level becomes a particularly strong conservative social factor. It solidifies preferences, behaviors, and patterns of evaluation. In the context of today’s ever-changing environment, such behaviors take the form of opposition to anything new — beginning with intolerance of different patterns that realize the same values, to blocking one’s awareness of new ideas or values. The sphere of cultural life — just like the economic one — illustrates that stagnation in the development of individuals, groups, or communities is not an act of preservation (maintaining inherited values), but a conservative one, resulting in relative regression in comparison to other reference groups. In this context, cultural remnants are no longer seen as valuable relics or archival treasures, but rather as burdens on a person’s journey through life. Freedom of experience and sincerity of perception emerge through the “understanding” of culture, its creations, their meaning, and value. This, however, becomes possible only through intellectual effort and self-creation. Contemporary culture no longer imposes rigid frameworks or separates levels of reception of “difficult” values. Its characteristics are permeability, openness, and changeability. Between mass culture and elite culture, there exists a wide range of levels and areas from which individuals make subjective choices. The main criterion for this selection lies in one’s competence.

The article addresses the issue of the theory of education, presenting it as a discipline within pedagogy. It outlines the conditions necessary for effectively developing this field of study and the challenges that need to be addressed. The theory of education is certainly not a uniform and internally coherent system of propositions, as its name might suggest. It encompasses a wide range of various theories, often mutually exclusive. These include both general and partial theories. In the sense adopted here, the theory of education is considered one of the fundamental pedagogical disciplines, alongside general pedagogy, didactics, and the history of education. It is important to emphasize that contemporary theory of education — much like pedagogy itself, of which it is an integral part — can be oriented both theoretically and practically. It also strives to resist unconstructive and ambiguous assumptions stemming from postmodernism and the New Age movement, which promote not only cognitive but also moral relativism. Practiced in this manner, the theory of education offers the promise of significant progress in addressing issues that are essential from both a theoretical standpoint and the perspective of broadly understood pedagogical practice. Achieving this goal requires, above all, a critical evaluation of past achievements, a pluralistic research approach, and drawing upon the insights of philosophy, psychology, and sociology, as well as a deeper reflection on both education and the individual being educated.

The article addresses the issue of inquiries into self-education and self-upbringing in the postmodern world, which is influenced by both postmodernism and globalization, as well as technopoly. This topic appears to be not only cognitively interesting but also significant during the formation of the information society — the knowledge society. This is due, among other things, to the fact that informational self-education and self-upbringing carry a considerable "charge" of innovation and creativity, which could be properly harnessed for the benefit of the individual, humanity, and even the ecosystem in which we live at the beginning of the 21st century. The postmodern world is most often associated with postmodernism, but also with globalization. In pedagogy, both approaches reveal many ambiguities, among which a particularly notable role may be played by the “managing technopoly” that oversees education and e-education. Postmodernism, distinguished by some authors from broader civilizational phenomena referred to as postmodernity, appears among other concepts as the name of a complex and multidimensional cultural trend. Its dominant features include a sense of rupture, decline, and transgression within the contemporary epoch. Although the concept of postmodernism first appeared in the 1930s and was used in literary criticism in the 1950s, it entered mainstream aesthetic and philosophical discourse in the 1970s and 1980s. The prominence given to postmodernism by Jean-François Lyotard in The Postmodern Condition: A Report on Knowledge stems from his general characterization of contemporary reality in the early 1980s, emphasizing a break in cultural continuity, the emergence of new conditions for human existence, and new frameworks for thinking. The change that emerged in the cultural climate of the West after World War II is linked, among other things, to the rise of new civilizational phenomena — most notably, a new status of knowledge resulting from the information explosion and the increasing dependence of knowledge production on market demands. This shift has led to a reorientation from the pursuit of truth to a focus on efficiency. Central to these reflections is the analysis of the legitimacy of the scientific “language game” discourse, and thus the rejection of grand narratives in the realms of philosophical speculation and political emancipation. There is no longer faith in liberation through knowledge, and there is a growing awareness that the legitimacy of knowledge can arise solely from its own linguistic and communicative practices.

We are participants in the development of a civilization and society that is referred to as a global information society. In shaping such a society, the media and information technologies play a crucial role. The aim of this article is to identify the characteristic features of the information society and to highlight the role of media and media education in its development. Media education is understood here as learning about the media and through the media. The transformation from an industrial society to an information society is marked by several phenomena resulting from civilizational development. First, in an information society, the production and circulation of information become significant economic activities; information itself becomes an economic category — a substitute for raw materials and labor. The majority of the gross national income is generated within the broadly understood information sector. Second, all forms of social activity — production, politics, finance, defense, science, culture, education, tourism, and so on — are supported by information technology and techniques. As a result, the functioning of an information society requires a global technical, organizational, and legislative infrastructure as its material foundation. A particularly important role is played by electronic media, which enable the rapid flow of information and knowledge, and also make our work faster and more efficient. Third, a key condition for building an information society is the initiation of appropriate educational processes. This concerns, above all, widespread education in information technology and media. People who do not acquire competencies in this area will be at risk, as they will not be prepared for work, for learning, or for everyday participation in public life.

The relationship between education and socio-economic development has been recognized for many years, but only now are we beginning to observe the first effects of the mass introduction of digital media into education. In many highly industrialized countries, the widespread use of computers as a medium in the teaching and learning process has led to profound changes in the organization and functioning of education. This article addresses the issue of computerization and informatization in Polish schools, where efforts have been made to introduce computers on a large scale through programs such as “Internet for Municipalities” and “Internet for Junior High Schools.” These programs reinforced existing trends in educational change that had already been observed in Poland. Among their outcomes were the popularization of the idea of equipping Polish schools with computers, raising local communities’ awareness of the importance of information technology, increasing teachers’ interest in IT, providing training centers with experience in mass teacher requalification, and overcoming many school-level barriers — such as principals’ and teachers’ fears regarding the use of computers in everyday school operations. The effectiveness of efforts to spark public interest in information technology and to persuade teachers to incorporate computers into their educational work required the development of a training system based on a selective and practical understanding of IT tools. This approach was both the simplest and most effective way to achieve the intended goals. As a result, these goals were successfully met at the initial stage of integrating information technology into education, and the initiative also received broad social approval. Since the popularization and awareness of the importance of information technology in society brought more benefits for the country’s development than the negative effects of technologizing the educational process, it was incorporated into educational practice. However, continuing this direction of IT education in schools today will lead to a rapid increase in social costs, while the benefits (e.g., promotion of information technology) are steadily diminishing. It should be noted that, in the initial stage, the focus on operating technology was a necessary cost — one that had to be borne in order to move closer to the forefront of European countries in terms of the mass implementation of computers in education.

The perspective of over 20 years of activities, research, and reflection on the use of computers, IT tools and methods, or information technologies in pedagogical processes related to education and social communication reveals, on the one hand, significant changes in how these technologies are perceived by the educational community. On the other hand, it highlights persistent tendencies that hinder the use of computers in the work of educators and teachers. In this text, the authors — drawing on research as well as personal experience and opinions — present reflections on the place and role of information technologies in the work of educators and teachers, on the forms and methods of IT education for students in pedagogical fields, and on evolving trends in the theoretical foundations for the use of information technologies in education and social communication. The first computers appeared over 50 years ago. It has been 20 years since the introduction of the first IBM personal computer to the market — a development that revolutionized access to computers and initiated a period of widespread IT application. The origins of the global computer network, the Internet, date back to the 1960s. Over the years, there has been an evolution in the understanding of many concepts related to information technology. Today, the term "computer" refers not only to a widely known device but primarily to an information processor (in the logical sense), which also encompasses local and global networks and multimedia equipment. The computer has become a universal tool in human cognitive activity: it offers a new form of objectifying such activity, allows for the active fulfillment and partial automation of tasks such as analyzing specific aspects of a problem, assigning, assimilating, and supplementing existing data with new information, generating new knowledge based on analysis and inference procedures, and dynamically visualizing objects. The term "information technology" is understood as the combination of computer science with other fields and technologies that interact with it and influence its application in society. Computer science is treated as a discipline that deals with various aspects of information: collecting, storing, processing, presenting, and using information in communication between objects, systems, and people.

Distance education is a symbolic illustration of the potential complementarity between technological progress and the imperative to ensure universal access to basic education in the near future. By combining not only didactic but even pedagogical goals with modern media, distance learning contributes to the fundamental mission of all education: the emancipation of the human being—wherever possible—mainly from limitations and ignorance. The urgent need for the widespread implementation of distance education results from various contemporary social phenomena, including the effort to ensure access to education not only for members of the emerging information society—that is, the society of the knowledge, information, and communication era—but also for those who exist today on the margins of that society, in so-called educational niches. For underdeveloped countries, it is often the primary method for eliminating secondary illiteracy, caused by the increasing lifespan of modern individuals and the rapid obsolescence of their knowledge and skills. The inadequacy of traditional forms of education in meeting the needs of adult education, literacy, the democratization of societies, and economic and technological evolution is exacerbated by the rapid and profound changes brought about by the emergence of new technologies and numerous scientific innovations. As the importance of information in the production of goods and services grows, and as cost reduction becomes a major factor in production, traditional education faces fundamental challenges. The crises experienced by national education systems highlight the difficulty of reconciling the school’s traditional mission—building and consolidating knowledge and skills—with new demands it must face: creating educational structures and types adapted to new challenges, especially to the evolving demands of the labor market. Telecommunications, computer networks, multimedia information and communication technologies (ICT), and the global World Wide Web have opened up an entirely new avenue of teaching and learning for a wide range of institutions—not only educational and academic, but also business institutions—located in different places, countries, continents, and time zones. Learners can be spread across the globe and still work and communicate freely with a virtual community. ICT has already been successfully used for several years to disseminate knowledge and competencies within society. It enables the material delocalization of knowledge by placing it in the global computer network—namely, the Internet. In this way, knowledge will no longer be concentrated in privileged and inaccessible locations for many interested individuals. Distance learning should become a tool for accessible education, a democratic form of learning tailored to each individual's needs—education that can be provided everywhere and to everyone.

The term "information culture" should be considered in relation to concepts such as "work culture" and "technical culture," as well as in the context of other related phenomena (e.g., "praxeological culture" or "economic culture"). The meaning of "technical culture" has historically changed along with developments in technology and its relationship to culture and civilization. The term "culture"—as both a component and an attribute of technical culture—is interpreted in a multidimensional way, which makes explaining the concept of information culture particularly challenging. Similar difficulties arise from the ambiguity of the term "technology." The meaning of technical culture was different in the industrial civilization, which was dominated by values such as capital, labor, and means of production. Its meaning must be different in the information civilization, where information, knowledge, and human competences prevail. Does this mean that in the model of the information society, the concept of information culture will replace that of technical culture? Clarifying the meanings of these terms is especially important today. It is also crucial to define the relationships between these concepts and others such as work culture, praxeological culture, and economic culture. Given the changes in the civilizational model and the ongoing development of the information civilization, it is necessary to determine the relationship between the concept of technical culture and the notions of IT culture and information culture. Without going into extensive explanation, we can assume that technical culture is the broadest concept. The starting points for our analysis are the concepts of culture and civilization; technology and informatics. It should be added that information culture currently serves as a category for describing the information civilization and society. The challenges this poses for education and the sciences related to it make this concept a fundamental category in contemporary pedagogy.

The article addresses the issue of andragogy in the contemporary world—specifically, the challenges faced by adult educators and their learners, who, after completing formal education, must navigate the modern world. When studying andragogical works on adult education, educational reports outlining “new” responsibilities for adult educators, and visions of the future teacher shaped by pedagogues, one cannot help but notice that most authors tend to favor a technological model of didactic work with adult learners, as described in detail by M. Malewski. According to this model, the main task of the adult educator is to "pour ready-made, unproblematic knowledge through a funnel into the empty vaults of the learners’ minds and reflect in their consciousness an image of the world in which they are (or will be) living and working." This image is presented as a system of naturally existing social institutions, moral norms, procedures of conduct, and the best social practices—considered superior because they are sanctified by tradition. By learning the objective and unchanging laws that govern this system, the individual acquires or enhances their social competences. This vision of education places the adult educator at the center, fulfilling a social mission composed of numerous tasks and predefined functions. Among these, andragogues most often identify: didactic, educational, innovative, community-oriented, research, caregiving, and socializing roles.

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