1 Minutes of the 2019 Learner Development SIG AGM

Minutes of the 2019 Learner Development SIG Annual General Meeting
Sunday November 3rd 2019 11:45AM -12:45 PM at JALT2019, Nagoya
Facilitated by Andy Barfield & Fumiko Murase, with the minutes taken by Lorna Asami
Present: Lorna Asami, Andy Barfield, Blair Barr, Dominic Edsall, Darren Elliott, Ann Flanagan, Ellen Head, KenIkeda, Kio Iwai, Masayo Kanno, Patrick Kiernan, Fumiko Murase, & Satomi Yoshimuta
Apologies: Koki Tomita, Kris Sullivan, and Yoshi Nakai
I. Documents distributed and topics for discussionII. People: Committee members and roles for 2020
III. Money: Treasurer’s report for 2018-2019 and draft budget for 2020
IV. Topics discussed at the AGM
Appendix A LD SIG Financial Summary, prepared for the November 2019 AGM
November 2018 – October 2019 Revenues and Expenses
2020 Draft Budget amended and agreed at the AGM
The AGM opened at 11.45 with a welcome and thank you for attending, and a quick round of selfintroductions. Andy mentioned that Lorna Asami had volunteered to do the minutes, and then invited
everyone to look through the 2019 LD SIG Committee Review for a few minutes and talk in pairs about what
they found interesting or important. The meeting would first focus on people and money questions, then havea rolling discussion of the different topics listed, according to attendees’ interests and concerns. Before
beginning, a grant to attend conferences was awarded to Masayo Kanno by Kio Iwai. Masayo will publish at alater time in the SIG’s newsletter, Learning Learning.

I. Documents distributed and topics for discussion●●●●

A copy of the committee team reports for 2019 was shared. Thank you to all who contributed.
A review of 2019 expenditure, and a draft 2020 budget. Thank you to Patrick for preparing this.
A list of committee members and roles
Possible discussion topics for the AGM

II. People: Committee members and roles for 2020
bracketed names = (members of the SIG, but not members of the committee)
double-bracketed names = ((not members of the SIG or the committee))Co-coordinators: Koki Tomita & Yoshio Nakai
Treasurer: Patrick Kiernan
Membership Team: Ann Flanagan steps down; Tetsuko Fukawa steps up.
Grants Team: Sami Yoshimuta, & Kio Iwai; Kris Sullivan steps down; Masayo Kanno steps up.
Programmes Team: Blair Barr & Robert Morel (Rob will step down after the 2020 PanSIG.)

2 Minutes of the 2019 Learner Development SIG AGM
Publicity Team: Gretchen Clark steps down; Ellen Head steps up.
Publicity Team Illustrator: Rob Moreau
Publications Team: James Underwood
Learning Learning Editorial Team: Tokiko Hori, Ken Ikeda, Fumiko Murase, Yoshio Nakai, Hugh Nicoll, Koki
Tomita, & James Underwood; Andy Barfield, Chika Hayashi, Daniel Hougham, and Sean Toland step down;
Lorna Asami steps up.
Learner Development Journal Steering Group: Tim Ashwell, Darren Elliott, Alison Stewart; Dominic Edsall
steps up.
Learner Development Journal Issue 4 editors - ((Sabine Little)) & ((Michelle Golledge))
Learner Development Journal Issue 5 editors - Andy Barfield, Oana Cusen, (Yuri Imamura), ((Jussi Jussila)),& (Riitta Kelly)
Web Maintenance Team: Hugh Nicoll (main LD website), Darren Elliott (LD Journal website)
Tokyo Get-Togethers: Ken Ikeda, Ian Hurrell, James Underwood
Kansai Get-Togethers: Nothing formalised yet, but Dominic Edsall, (Ann Flanagan), Fumiko Murase, and(Katherine Thornton) to share ideas informally about a possible student conference at some point in thefuture.
Committee Members at large: Lee Arnold, Mathew Coomber, Dexter Da Silva, Oana Cusen, Bill Mboutsiadis,& Mike Nix

III. Money: Treasurer’s report for 2018-2019 and draft budget for 2020
Patrick Kiernan (treasurer) went over the SIG’s finances and explained the draft budget for 2020.

November 2018-October 2019 clarifications
1. Revenues
CCLT conference event fees were charged only to teachers, not students.
2. Expenses
This year there were three conference grants. Postage and bank fees were for various conference
expenses.

2020 Draft Budget for Discussion
1. The 2020 draft budget was drawn up by Koki Tomita and Patrick Kiernan.
2. Revenuesa. The annual grant from the JALT Central Office (JCO), PanSIG profit shared, and CCLT areconservative estimates.
b. The CCLT revenue (at 1,000 JPY for teachers) is dependent upon the number of attendees, as is thePanSIG shared profit (in Niigata in 2020).

3. Expenses
a. Grants - points raised and/or discussed:● Request for clarification: 160,000 is for 4 grants.

3 Minutes of the 2019 Learner Development SIG AGM
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Maximum 1 research grant is awarded.
Grants are not always taken up, as it depends on what grants applicants are going for.
In 2019, 200,000 in grants went out (3 conference grants, 1 project grant, 1 research grant).
Question: When are grants allocated? Answer: In March.
Discussion: Timing of announcement of grants, number of grants, and requirements made ofrecipients; grants used to purchase books, travel, software, publications asked for in return;presently unnecessary for recipients to disclose how grant funds will be (and are) spent;current application requirements on LD website (http://ld-sig.org/grants/).
LD wants flexibility and also more explicit guidelines for grants. Possibility of having a template
made where applicant states use of their budget, connection to LD. People felt that they do notwant a Kaken-type of application. Having a template filled out would help grant reviewers aswell.
Grants are only open to LD SIG members. People cannot make a grant application and then join
the SIG to get a grant; they must be SIG members at the time of applying, and their SIG
membership status is cross-checked.
Agreed that the SIG should aim to provide 5 grants for 2020 as this provides valuable support
for teachers without access to institutional funding.
Patrick will amend the grants budget to 5, with a review in mind.

b. Shadow co-coordinator expenses● Discussion of providing financial support for a future shadow co-coordinator to attend one or
two JALT Executive Board Meetings (EBMs) so that they can become familiar with how JALTworks.
● Agreed that 60,000 would be a reasonable amount to budget for this, even though no shadow
coordinator has been recruited yet.
c. Website maintenance● Agreed that a payment of minimum 6,000 to 20,000 maximum would be made to Hugh Nicoll(LD webmaster) for possible consultation and other costs in migrating the LD website to themain JALT website.
● Blair Barr’s question: If website is transferred, do we know how much JALT will charge us?
Answer: It will be deducted by JCO directly from the SIG’s account, approximately 10,000 yen.

IV. Topics discussed at the AGM
Communication – with members1. Reviewing and developing current communication with SIG members
Tied to migration of LD websites. See “Website” below.

Activities
1. LD forum themes for 2020

4 Minutes of the 2019 Learner Development SIG AGM
Blair Barr (programmes)
Pan-SIG Active Learning will be reprised at Pan-SIG due to excellent response for the LD forum atJALT2019.
JALTCALL LD forum theme not yet decided.
JALT International Various themes were suggested and brainstormed, with Ellen mentioning thatsomething connected with transformation as part of learner development would be interesting:
Learner identities
Learners as researchers
Content-based learning
Teacher Autonomy
Learner Autonomy
Transformational learning
Learning transformations
Learning communities
Transformational Learning Communities (TLC)
Connecting to the JALT2020 conference theme of Communities of Practice, we agreed that
“Transformational Learning Communities” (TLC) would be an appealing theme for the LD forum.
Ellen Head commented that in the future, exploring ways to allow for remote participation might beworthwhile as a supplement to face-to-face events.
2. Re-starting the Kansai get-togethers in 2020
Ann Flanagan, Fumiko Murase, and Dominic Edsall agreed to start informal discussions with Katherine
Thornton about organizing a student conference (Kansai to the World), possibly in connection with
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). So, things are “under discussion.”
3. Focusing the Tokyo get-togethers in 2020 on (a) shared theme(s)?
Ken Ikeda (Tokyo get-together co-coordinator): Nothing decided yet, but CCLT5 is focused on “learningactively.”

Grants
1. Reviewing and developing grant awards: What topics fit/don’t fit under “Learner Development”?
Why?
Andy explained that, just as with some writing submitted to Learning Learning, some grant applicantsfocus on second language acquisition, but do not make any kind of connection to key themes of learnerdevelopment, so what the SIG understands by “learner development” and “researching learner5 Minutes of the 2019 Learner Development SIG AGM
development” needs some discussion. Satomi Yoshimuta (grants team) shared her thoughts,
mentioning that this question had come up among the grants team, as well as with the Learning
Learning (LL) editorial team because grant awardee essays and reports get published in LL and theyneed to be relevant to the LL readership.
The grants team had decided it is necessary to provide more explicit guidelines on the LD website
for would-be applicants. They are also hoping to provide an online form with required sections forapplicants to complete. People at the meeting were very positive about the grants team’s intendedactions.
2. Grants team
Masayo Kanno will join the grants team.

Website
1. Hugh Nicoll, Darren Elliot, and Paul Collett will be working on migrating the LD main website to themain JALT website in December and/or January. Hugh will contact the Kyoto chapter who moved theirWordPress suite to the main JALT website. (Hugh’s main concern is preventing data loss in transmissionof the sites.) Everyone in attendance was in agreement with moving the websites across.
2. Darren Elliott (Learner Development Journal webmaster) said the present site needs to be migrated
as it is sitting on a privately posted WordPress site.
3. Migration work is also connected to who is running the LD news list, members’ list, and LD
discussion. Andy suggested it might be good at some point to have a Google group/groups, but thiswould need someone to be responsible for it/them. It was mentioned that this is not a highly technicaljob.
4. Darren had a few technical questions, and Andy recommended consulting Paul Collett about them.
5. A brief exchange between Darren and Dominic Edsall regarding coding, ease in running the sites, anda content management system called Drupal.

Publications
1. Recruiting new members for the LD Journal Steering Group: Dominic Edsall said he would like to join
the JSG.
2. Recruiting new members for the LL Editorial team: Lorna Asami is joining the editorial team.

Communication – administrative1. New webmaster(s) for website and coordinating of LD mailing lists? See “Website” above.
2. Reviewing and developing current communication and shadowing among SIG officers, including
regular officer online meetings to check in on LD team activities: No discussion of this took place.
3. Setting up an LD calendar for 2020 that gives a sense of annual LD activities to the officers? Seehttps://docs.google.com/document/d/12NpVXNI1askgCz0i-wkCrj5Z1VTVfvq_oR4Ka6VLNI/edit?usp=sharing No discussion of this took place.
Publicity
1. Ellen Head will join the publicity team.

6 Minutes of the 2019 Learner Development SIG AGM
The AGM closed at about 12.45 pm.

Appendix A LD SIG Financial Summary, prepared for the November 2019 AGM
November 2018 – October 2019 Revenues and Expenses
Balance (30 November, 2018)

162,931 (+200,000 reserve)

Revenues
Annual grant from JCO

170,607

PanSIG profit shared

76,199CCLT Conference event fees

20,000Overpayment refund

198

Total

267,004

Expenses
Conference grants

120,000

Project grant

40,000Research grant

40,000

JALT2018 SIG table

14,000Get-together room costs (October)

2,592

Postage, bank fees

8,305

Total

224,897

Balance (2 November, 2019)

205,038 (+200,000 reserve)

Expenses, November 2019, expected
Photocopying for JALT Conference?

Postage for JALT Conference? (last year 5,444)

Room fee (December CCLT Conference)? (last year 47,628)

SIG (attendance at JALT meetings)?

Website maintenance (?)? (20,000 suggested)

Total

73,072 +7 Minutes of the 2019 Learner Development SIG AGM

Balance (1 December, 2019, estimated)

131,966 (+200,000 reserve)2020 Draft Budget amended after the AGM

Revenues
Annual grant from JCO

170,000PanSIG profit shared

50,000

CCLT

20,000Total

240,000

Expenses
Grants200,000

EBM attendance for shadow co-coordinator

60,000Website maintenance

10,000Get-together room fees + CCLT6

50,000Conference-related costs (table fee, postage)

20,000Miscellaneous

10,000Total

350,000

Balance (1 December, 2020, estimated)

21,966 (+200,000 reserve)