Factors and reasons for the leadership of Kazan University among Russian universities in the international rating THE in the field of Education

What is the reason for such achievements?

Director of the Institute of psychology and education, Professor Aidar Kalimullin formulated 12 main theses and aspects, answering this question:



1. Kazan Federal University presents a unique Russian experience of teacher training in multi-profile universities that efficiently solve not only educational, but also research tasks that are so relevant to a dynamically changing world. On Tuesday, a new subject rating of universities in the world Times Higher Education was published. In the subject area "Education", KFU is the only one of the six Russian universities represented in the rating that is included in the top hundred. Kazan University, which debuted in this rating four years ago, has been strengthening its position since then – this time the Tatarstan University is located on the 90th line. Joint international research in the field of education allowed the University not only to maintain its position, but also to grow in the international rating.

2. KFU's Participation in the "5-100" project brings results. Over the years, we have seen that it is impossible to stand still, otherwise the University will not be useful for the country's education system. Therefore, each year of participation in the project has become a time of high-quality fruitful work for scientists. And with its achievement, KFU demonstrates progress in the development of teacher education in Russia in the international arena.

3. In Practice, KFU is the only Russian University that consistently and on a large scale represents Russian pedagogical education to the world scientific community. This became possible thanks to the participation of our scientists at leading international conferences (WERA, AERA, ECER, BERA, ISATT, etc.), as well as the inclusion of KFU in the number of participants of associations.

4. Oxford University (great Britain), Minho University (Portugal), University of Glasgow (Scotland), Technical University of Dresden (Germany), University of Texas at El Paso and University of Miami (USA), University of Dublin (Ireland), University of Constantine the Philosopher in Nitra (Slovakia), University of Thessaly (Greece), University of Salamanca (Spain) and many others – these are today's partners of scientists of the Institute of psychology and education.

5. Jointly conducted research focuses on the similarity of problems of teacher training systems in different countries of the world and helps to develop multinational standards for teacher training, which will reflect the most relevant and most important requirements for the professional qualities of teachers.

6. the University's activity in the field of scientific research has been growing rapidly in recent years. Since 2013, the number of scientific publications indexed in the Scopus database has increased by more than 50 times. According to Scival, KFU publications in the field of education are among the top ten most cited worldwide.

7. if the first forum on teacher education was attended by 165 participants, including 101 participants-in person, 64 participants-in absentia, in 2020, even despite the situation with coronovirus, about 900 scientists (120 foreign colleagues) took part in the Forum. These are representatives of 275 universities, scientific and educational organizations, including 79 foreign ones.

8. For 10 days of work, according to statistics from Microsoft it virtual platform was visited by more than 32 thousand participants. The forum has become a real scientific bridge that unites Russian and foreign researchers.

9. The Average share of international students in 2020 was more than 10%, while in the 2016 ranking it was 2%. Even in the face of a pandemic, we are able to maintain the indicators of international integration: we offer online training to students from abroad.

10. Over the years the project has created its own system of training teachers. This is one of the most comprehensive teacher training systems in the international dimension, which includes several variable models of teacher education (we are the only ones in the country that train teachers at all levels – bachelor's, master's, postgraduate and support teachers throughout their professional careers), modern training infrastructure (e-learning, model school classes, our own General education lyceums, a kindergarten for children with ASD, digital laboratories, a planetarium, etc.

11. We consider all our educational institutions of preschool, primary and secondary education, on the one hand, as high-quality bases for practical training of students, and on the other hand, as a platform for various research in the field of educational technologies, psychology of children and their socialization, as well as for implementing our own developments in educational practice. This reinforces the research orientation of teacher education in KFU, which is underrepresented in traditional pedagogical universities.

12. International experience, close cooperation with foreign scientists have become a serious help in finding effective answers to current problems of teacher training, which we immediately tried to implement in our practical activities. We have strengthened our experimental work, which has allowed us to increase research funding for our scientists. Compared to 2015, the funding was tripled.