The article presents an analysis of educational theory in light of the challenges confronting education in the twenty-first century. The author examines how our ideas about the methods for managing the transmission of culture, the subject of education, and the consequences of these changes for the theory of education have changed. The author reviews the challenges to general educational theory: multiculturalism, decentralized management of the content of the transmitted cultural experience, the holistic alignment of educational outcomes, the new subject orientation, the new context of education, changing teacher roles, and professional teacher training. Special attention is given to research into innovations in continuing education around the world (including in Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States [CIS]) and the paradoxes of these approaches, which are responsible for the development of a new theory of continuing education. [This article was translated by Kenneth Cargill.]