Members of the discussion club met at the Higher School of Journalism and Mass Communications to discuss the IFTE international forum that starts on May 27. The organizing committee did not cancel the forum but had to switch to the virtual format. Therefore, the International Forum on Teacher Education will be the first online forum in Russia with almost 1000 participants registered.
Rustam Vafin had an interview with guests at his studio – Professor Aidar Kalimullin, the director of the Institute of psychology and education, Roza Valeeva, the head of the department of education at the Institute of psychology and education and Tatiana Baklashova, the deputy director of the Institute of psychology and education and IFTE executive director.
Due to the pandemic all international events were postponed. But as Aidar Kalimullin mentioned, the forum could not disappoint the participants’ expectations.
- Our forum has already become recognized around the world: we received 861 applications, 120 of them are from our colleagues abroad; the forum will host participants from 29 countries, 73 Russian cities and 275 universities. To organize it in a virtual format is a real challenge for us, but the facilities of Kazan University will let the participants from Russia and other countries present their ideas and discuss them.
Kazan University is one of the best technically-equipped universities in Russia. It is among global top-100 universities for education in THE World University Ranking and global top-200 universities in the QS World University Ranking.
- Kazan is becoming one of the top Russian cities in terms of teacher education development, we often hear that from our guests. That’s why our forum is one of the most attractive platforms for researchers.
Another reason why the forum is gaining its popularity is that all submitted articles are published in journals indexed in Scopus and WoS databases.
- We offer support and supervision to each author from paper submission to article verification in Scopus and WoS databases, which includes methodological support, reviewing, formatting. The forum helped scientists from Sakhalin, Novosibirsk, Kaliningrad get to the international level and present their results.
The Virtual IFTE-2020 forum is a unique event also because Microsoft became one of the key partners this year. All keynote speaker sessions, virtual sessions, online meetings and poster presentations will be available on Microsoft Teams platform.
- Microsoft engineers work closely with us and support all our ideas and suggestions. They developed a unique forum architecture that allows any participant from any country connect to IFTE. This year 575 reports will be presented online. We invite to join a wide range of events organized in different formats: workshops, round tables, sessions and meetings of 14 research groups.
The key activities at the forum will cover such topics as digitalization of modern teacher education, advanced training and retraining of teachers in the context of the “digital divide”, digital technologies in future teachers training, etc.
- Every year we define three key topics for the forum. One of the key issues we want to discuss this year is digitalization of teacher education - said Roza Valeeva.
General information
The IFTE-2020 virtual forum will start on May 27 and last until June 9, 2020. The forum is an opportunity to present, discuss and promote research results of leading Russian and foreign scientists in the field of teacher education.
Participating universities:
- Sorbonne University, France
- University of Miami, USA
- Oxford University, UK
- Victoria University, Australia
- University of South Hampton, UK
- Texas A&M University, USA
- University of Glasgow, Scotland
Among IFTE Keynote Speakers:
- Edison Trickett, Professor at the University of Miami, USA; H-index – 30
- Maria Flores, Professor at the Institute of Education, University of Minho, Portugal; H-index – 18
- Gabriel Horenczyk, Professor of the Seymour Fox School of Education of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel; H-index – 16
- Cheryl Craig, Professor at Texas A&M University, USA, President of ISATT; H-index – 18
- Ian Menter, Emeritus Professor of Teacher Education at Kellogg College, University of Oxford; H-index – 15
Dina Birman, Professor of Educational and Psychological Studies at the University of Miami, the USA; H-index - 25