Abstract:

The Covid-19 pandemic has had a large influence on the educational system, including adult education. Adult education institutions were forced to transform the way how they provide their educational services to ensure the continuity of their work. These changes resulted in an unprecedented digital transformation of the adult education sector in Latvia. In order to understand the consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic on adult education well as the future perspectives of online education in Latvia, the author conducted a survey of educational institutions that provide adult education programmes in Latvia in May-June 2021 as well as organised expert interviews in February 2022. Based on the results of these studies, the author developed future scenarios for the development of adult education in Latvia providing corresponding recommendations for policymakers.

The aim of the publication is to analyse possible adult education development scenarios in Latvia providing policy recommendations to implement them.
In order to achieve the aim, the following tasks have been defined:
1. to review scientific literature about the latest trends in adult education;
2. to analyse the results of the survey of Latvian adult education institutions and expert interviews regarding the future development of adult education in Latvia;
3. to develop scenarios for future development of the adult education sector in Latvia;
4. to provide policymakers with recommendations on how to ensure the implementation of the developed scenarios.

Used research methods: scientific literature review, survey, expert interviews, scenario method.
Main results of the research: according to the survey results, the main direction of development of adult education in Latvia is flexibility in choosing the appropriate form of the learning process that corresponds to optimal expected learning outcomes. However, the online component of the adult learning process is expected to increase its importance in various forms (web-facilitated, combined, hybrid or fully online learning).

Keywords:

Adult education, online learning, Latvia, Covid-19.