LEARNING LEARNING 

Volume 24 Issue 1 May 2017

GET-TOGETHERSTokyo Get-together Report:
Making Plans Together for 2017
JHV VRJHVKHT

Andy Barfield, Ian Hurrell, Jenny Morgan, andKen Ikeda

We began 2017 with a lively meetingof 14 people in January where we
made plans for 2017. The January
get-together started with an introduction
round to welcome new participants, PeterJoun and Keiko Yuyama. We then discussed
the new venue for the Tokyo get-togethersfrom April 2017, and dates for the monthly
meetings, which from April are going to beheld at Rikkyo University in Ikebukuro (formore details see http://ld-sig.org/tokyo-gettogethers/).
Our next area of discussion was creating
continuity and development from one gettogether to the next, with a positive sense ofmoving forward together. As a “participantcentred” SIG, the get-togethers are entirely
reliant on those attending co-creating theformat and content of each meeting bybringing along their own pedagogic interests,
puzzles and challenges, and/or researchinterests and concerns, to do with “learnerdevelopment.” People expressed theneed/desire for some kind of structure,some degree of continuity–of themes, ofpeople to talk with. Yet, we also want tobalance any structure with the “open,inviting culture” of LD, keeping thelooseness and spontaneity that allow us tocreate whatever happens each time with
whoever turns up.

pedagogic issues that they face with
their learners, so the get-togethers
involve “teacher support group”
discussions and sharing. This was doneat different times in the past andworked best when people preparedcopies of student artifacts/work forsuch discussions.
2. Another option is at the start of the gettogether participants share their learnerdevelopment themes/topics/areas offocuses, and then people split
into “like-minded focus groups” todiscuss and learn about a theme or
research focus of interest. At
subsequent
get-togethers
peoplecontinue to meet with the same theme
group to develop and explore ideas
more deeply. From experience, it isgood if people have the option tochange groups, so some flexibility isneeded with this option. Past themebased discussion groups led to somemembers later presenting together at
the national JALT conference andwriting up their learning and research
togetherfortheconference
proceedings.
Anothergroup’sdiscussions formed the basis of a bookproject on collaborative learning. Manyof the research team members havesince become active in the LD SIG.

We discussed several different options forthe 2017 get-togethers:

3. Some people said they had very muchenjoyed the short workshops on doing
research that individual members had
presented in the first part of gettogethers last year (e.g., Exploratory
Practice, interview-based research,narrative research, and diary research).
Suggestions for continuing with this in2017
ledtotheideaof
having workshop ideas come from gettogether participants so that sometimes
people could volunteer to give an
exploratory presentation on a learnerdevelopment theme that interests them.

1. Participants bring to each gettogether samples of student work andrelated teacher puzzles/challenges, toshare ideas and explore practical

4. Another possibility that some people
would like to try includes people
giving practice presentations to get
feedback and critique before presenting

SPRING 2017

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LEARNING LEARNING 

Volume 24 Issue 1 May 2017at bigger conferences. People felt thismight be a particularly good focus for
the October get-together whereindividuals could run through theirpresentations for JALT2017 and/orideas for CCLT4. Such presentationbased workshops might be 20-30
minutes long with plenty of time for
feedback and Q&A.
5. Another option is to designate loose
time-slots for mingling and sharing
learnerdevelopment
interests,questions, and puzzles, with a 60- to
90-minute workshop/ teacher puzzles/“free-talk” with student samples/shortworkshop presentations from theparticipants/workingonresearch
themes in small groups. Of course,
these time-slots would be negotiated bywhoever attends on the day.
We also talked about conveying some kindof minimal structure of the get-togethers on
the Learner Development website and in themessages that go out via Mailchimp for eachmonth’s session. People who have been to a
get-together are familiar with what they
involve, but for those who have not yettaken part, it would be helpful to have abasic outline such as:
§§

§
§
§§

14.00-14.15 Mingling and meeting inpairs
14.15-14.30 Sharing of people’s learnerdevelopment interests and deciding
pairs/groups and areas of focus
14.30-15.15 Pair and small-group
discussions
15.15-15.30 Short break
15.30-16.30 Pair and small-group
discussions, and next steps
16.30-17.00 Sharing with the wholegroup, announcements, the next gettogether

As part of the rolling discussions aroundstructuring the get-togethers and aimingfor Creating
Community
Learning
Together 4 in December 2017, various
suggestions were made about reaching out
and linking up in an informal way withSPRING 2017

members of other teacher groups andSpecial Interest Groups (SIGs) in the greater
Tokyo area. It might be possible, forexample, to make some connections with a
Reflective Practice group that has started up
at Rikkyo University. We could also invite
CALL SIG members to participate in theget-togethers
andexplore
learnerdevelopment dimensions of working withdifferent forms of technology. Another linkup would be to encourage teachers with
global issues interests to come and take partin the get-togethers. There is also theFramework and Language Portfolio SIG
that is interested in a joint event with LD in2017. Many ideas were mentioned, and weagreed that we want to keep arrangements
informal so that CCLT4 keeps its accessible,
student- and teacher-friendly, interactivecharacter.
We also discussed how the get-togethers canlead into reflective writing for Learning
Learning. Some participants from CCLT3
last year are writing reflections and shortreflective articles about the conference. The
idea is for each short reflective article to befollowed by two reader responses from SIG
members. Several people at the January gettogether expressed an interest in writing areader response and signed up to do so. It isquite possible that other writing will emerge
from the discussions at the get-togethers
this year, leading later into different
publishing opportunities.
Finally, we talked about a good, sustainable
way to keep a record of each get-together
that can be shared publicly. In the past we
have done collective write-ups, but this has
been somewhat of a burden at times to do
and put together. For 2017 we agreed that adifferent person each time would take theresponsibility of writing up a get-together.
The recorder would be responsible forcreating a Google doc and writing asummary of the get-together that will thenbe posted on the main LD website. For
January Jenny kindly offered to do this,followed by Lee Arnold in February. See
http://ld-sig.org/2017-tokyo-get-togethers/
for more details.

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