Andragogic Summer School as a Model of Interactional Education

Abstract

The Andragogic Summer School is a development project providing continuing education for experts in the field of adult education. It was founded in 1995 under the tutelage of the Pegagogy and Andragogy Department of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Ljubljana. The annual one-week course is a meeting place for andragogues and other adult education experts. Every year the school's program - its educational, developmental and research work focusing on community education or education for community development - attracts the most inquisitive of the leading adult education experts and the most innovative adult education practitioners. Apart from developing and promoting a specific Slovenian concept of community education, the Andragogic Summer School expert staff have also developed their own didactic model based on interactional education. The School participants engage m interactional education by establishing dose relationship with local people, local participants of the School, the development project leaders and foreign visiting experts, e. g. Liam Carey from Ireland, John Wallis from England and Stanislav Hubik from the Czeck Republic. The participants are invited to present and share their own community work experience as practiced in their own communities and encouraged to rela te it to the newly acquired theoretical principles. The Municipality of Ajdovščina, serving as a base, has been supportive of the project, enabling the participants to carry out experimental field work. The development of a feeling for the local environment on the part of participants is further enhanced by a community-set cultural program and informal gatherings with participation of local people, held in the evenings.