Pedagogy experts from around the world will discuss a range of questions without leaving their respective abodes.

The COVID-19 pandemic has disrupted millions of events across the planet, and our annual forum could not avoid the same fate. However, this force-majeure must not prevent researchers from meeting and sharing their expertise, as Rector Ilshat Gafurov notes in his greeting, “We hope that IFTE 2020’s virtual format will give a new impetus to teaching science, and the forum’s digital medium can become a unique platform to exchange experience and achievements in pedagogical technology, as well as reinforce cooperation between Russian and overseas scholars.”

Director of the Institute of Psychology and Education of Kazan University, forum co-chairman Aydar Kalimullin adds, “VirtualIFTE-2020 is our first experience of holding a large-scale conference in a fully virtual format. We view this unique experience as an opportunity to explore various online platforms to fulfill our mission to advance research in teacher education. The IFTE-2020 virtual conference will begin on May 29, as originally planned, and will last until June 9, 2020, which will allow us to deploy the conference in virtual space, taking into account the various time zones and the necessary preparatory activities for online participants.”

Over 900 contributors from 30 countries will use such platforms as Adobe Connect, Microsoft Teams, Lomonosov, YouTube, and others to join the conference.

Executive Director of IFTE 2020 Tatiana Baklashova adds that the forum will include both synchronous and asynchronous events. Three major conferences are in the schedule:
“E-learning in teacher education,” “Teacher education for social justice, equality and culturally relevant pedagogy,” and “Global trends and perspectives on bilingual and language teacher education.” 14 research groups plan to conduct panels.

More at http://ifte.kpfu.ru/en/home-page/

Source text: Galina Khasanova

Translation: Yury Nurmeev