On October 16, 2026, ELTE’s Faculty of Primary and Pre-School Education hosted the international conference titled “Current Issues in the Training of Teachers, Preschool, Infant and Toddler Care Providers in Hungary and the Carpathian Basin IV. – Education for the Future: Sustainable and Inclusive Pedagogical Pathways.”

The event focused on current issues in teacher education, as well as sustainability, inclusion, and innovative pedagogical approaches.

The morning program began with a cultural opening ceremony, followed by remarks from ELTE Rector Lénárd Darázs — who also served as chair of the conference’s scientific committee — welcoming the attendees. Next, Judit Mádlné Szőnyi, Vice Rector for General Affairs, presented ELTE’s Sustainability Flagship Program and its pedagogical implications. During the plenary session, Dorothee Gutknecht, a lecturer at the Evangelische Hochschule Freiburg, gave a presentation on supporting language comprehension in monolingual and multilingual children, while Ferenc Kemény, a researcher at the University of Graz, spoke about the cognitive and environmental background of the development of reading and spelling.

The afternoon sessions covered an extremely broad range of topics in teacher education. Topics included, among others, digital pedagogy and artificial intelligence, inclusion and diagnostics, the transition from preschool to school, emotional education and well-being, innovative learning pathways, children’s culture and arts education, as well as teacher education, mentoring, and professional development. The Hungarian-language sessions were complemented by international sessions in English and German.

The conference program also featured practice-oriented workshop discussions, including topics such as the pedagogical application of mindfulness cards and game-based competency development using LEGO® Six Bricks tools.

As one of the day’s highlight events, we welcomed Dr. Judit Kereki, Deputy State Secretary for Early Childhood Well-being, (Ministry of Education and Child Affairs), who, in the afternoon plenary session of the joint KÓTE-TÓK conference, presented the projects already underway and future plans of the Ministry’s State Secretariat for Early Childhood Well-being.

Now in its fourth year, the KÓTE conference once again provided an opportunity for representatives from various fields of teacher education to meet and engage in dialogue, while the program placed a strong emphasis on future pedagogical challenges, sustainability, an inclusive approach, and innovation.