Kazanites joined a conference titled ‘Teacher Education in (Trans)Formation: Global Trends, National Processes and Local Factors’.

This specialized conference on pedagogical education was held in Dresden and attended by 40 leading education scholars from 15 different countries, mainly representing prestigious educational institutions that are ranked within the top 200 best universities in education rankings. Kazan Federal University, which currently holds the top 125 position in the Times Higher Education rankings in that area, was represented at this conference as well.

The Conference was organized by an old and well-established partner of KFU – Technical University of Dresden and with support from a number of German organizations. The Center for Teacher Education, School and Vocational Training Research at TU Dresden (ZLSB) and its director Axel Gehrmann generously welcomed and impressed participants with the highest level of organization.

“This is not the first example of a very productive collaboration with TU Dresden,” Aydar Kalimullin, Director of the Institute of Psychology and Education of KFU, says. “Our delegation consisted of 5 scholars and was the biggest at the conference.”

Over 5 days of the conference, numerous illuminating and thought-provoking papers were presented, and all topics interlinked with one another. This showed that a lot of countries face similar problems in relation to teacher education. It is important to note that teacher shortages are a serious problem even in the most developed countries. In view of this, our international colleagues were very interested to learn about the case of Kazan Federal University and its practices. We focus on creating a multi-track system for entering the teaching profession, educational digitization, new infrastructure, and other innovations.

KFU scholars, Professor Aydar Kalimullin, Professor Roza Valeeva, Research Associate Daria Khanolainen, and Associate Professor Gulshat Shakirova devoted their presentations to the aforementioned issues. Moreover, a special forum for teachers was organized within the main conference that offered seminars and open lessons to school practitioners from various countries. KFU schools (lyceums) were represented by Olga Romanova, PhD, a distinguished chemistry teacher with the highest teaching qualification. She was active throughout the conference and shared her practical experience.

More than a half of all the participants of the conference also participated in International Forums on Teacher Education (IFTE) organized annually by KFU. They personally could attest to the grand scale of KFU’s transformation in the field of teacher education. It is important that many of them plan to return to Kazan for the next Forum (IFTE-2019) that will take place in May 29-31, 2019.

Source text: Galina Khasanova

Translation: Daria Khanolainen