This systematic review explores key characteristics of effective vocational education and training (VET) teachers’ professional development and the transfer of its results into educational practice. Through thematic analysis of 24 journal articles indexed in Scopus and/or Web of Science from 2014 to 2024, the review identifies ten features of effective professional development and eight attributes supporting its transfer to practice. Effective professional development and its transfer emphasise reflection, engagement in professional communities of practice, and targeted approaches that address VET teachers’ needs. While effective professional development focuses on providing relevant, active, and collaborative learning experiences, effective transfer to practice places additional emphasis on teachers’ capacity, transformative leadership, personally significant, authentic, transformative, and supportive learning experiences that ensure new knowledge and skills are effectively applied in daily professional activities. This review offers recommendations to enhance the systematic organisation of professional development, promoting more targeted approaches to improve teaching quality in VET.

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The paper aims to map available evidence regarding the transfer of learning from professional development (PD) into practice. The scoping review is based on an analysis of the key characteristics of effective PD, drawing from 60 meta-analyses and various types of reviews (e.g., systematic, integrative, etc.) regarding PD both in general and in various professional fields published from 2009 to 2024. Three research questions are put forward: What characterises effective PD? Which theoretical concepts in the scientific literature represent the transfer of adult PD into practice? And what processes and indicators show effective ways of transferring PD and learning outcomes into practice? The methodology of the review is organised into three steps—preliminary study, the main study, and conceptualisation—by selecting publications and deriving concepts and conclusions relevant to the research questions, as well as identifying knowledge gaps for further exploration. The research literature uses various concepts to characterise the transfer of PD into practice as it is determined by different contexts, research traditions, and practices. Although effective PD has been defined and several theoretical models have been developed, research on PD effectiveness indicators and processes related to the transfer of PD into practice is still ongoing. However, not all evaluations take these models as bases to evaluate the existing PD practices, so the different indicators proposed by different researchers make it difficult to compare the results. The main problem is insufficient evidence in terms of measurable and comparable effectiveness criteria in all fields. The scoping review reveals a variety of controversial or incompletely researched aspects of transferring PD results into practice.

This paper presents some results of the research on ‘Adult education resources to reduce youth unemployment’, which is a part of the project ‘Implementation of the European agenda for adult learning’. The research applies a mixed-method approach (quantitative and qualitative data analysis). The purpose of the paper is to identify the most/least-efficient non-formal and informal learning methods, forms, and initiatives to promote youth entrepreneurship and employability in Latvia as well as to show the relationship between the profile of young adults and their opinion on these methods, forms, and initiatives. The findings show that the young adults stressed the importance of cooperation with employers in organising educational activities, field trips as well as the necessity of having internships, projects, and meetings with entrepreneurs to learn from their experience. The most efficient non-formal and informal learning methods, forms, and initiatives to promote youth entrepreneurship and employability in Latvia are as follows: internship in a company or institution, projects, other persons’ experience and success stories, and training enterprises. The least efficient ones are mentoring, business incubators, coaching, individual work/action plan for the young people, business clubs, and business start-up funds/grants. The opinion of young adults on all aspects of non-formal and informal learning methods, forms, and initiatives depends on their profile (gender, education level, employment status, learning experience, etc.).

The rapidly changing economic, financial and social conditions require new knowledge and competences in order to be able to understand them, adapt to the new requirements and remain competitive and successful in the globalised social environment. Widening the access to lifelong learning is one way in which this could be achieved. A special role in this process is given to universities as promoters of lifelong learning. E-learning is a means of promoting the changes in academic studies and providing an opportunity to integrate non-formal and informal learning elements into formal education. Individualisation, learning opportunities flexible in time, as well as the e-environment can facilitate the development of students' competences. This article presents a study conducted during the implementation of an inter-university master's programme, ‘Educational Treatment of Diversity’ (in Spain, Latvia, Germany and the Czech Republic) in 2008–10. The research question was: which challenges for widening of opportunities were secured in e-learning in order to promote students' generic competences as a learning outcome?

The purpose of the paper is to clarify the role of education in promoting social innovation processes in the society based on the main findings of the theoretical study conducted from October 2014 to January 2015 within the project “Involvement of the Society in Social Innovation for Providing Sustainable Development of Latvia” supported by the National Research Program 5.2. EKOSOC-LV. The paper provides the analysis of causal interaction between social innovation and education, as well as two conceptual models which disclose the relationship between social innovation and education and the triple role of education in promoting social innovation; both are elaborated by the authors.