ENIRDELM CONFERENCE BOARD MEETING
0900, UJ Residence Hotel, Krakow, Poland, 14.09.2017,
MINUTES
Present: Roman Dorczak(Chair); Signe Neimane; Tim Hurley; Kristin Vanlommel; Karel Binon; Sebastjan Cagran; David Oldroyd (Retiring VPS ) Karol Sadleir (New VPS 2017)
Agenda
- Welcome – Roman welcomed the full Board to the conference & meeting.
- Conference Booklet & Programme – The final programme has been modified based on last minute contacts and requests made by participants. Changes will be announced as the conference proceeds. Three rooms are fully equipped and ready with technical equipment and support. 90 participants are expected, following many hundred of emails attempting with few responses to recruit participants: a record 13 from Belgium where next year’s conference will be held; Norway is the second largest source of participants but there is a good range of countries. Keynote speakers, both from Poland, were identified by Roman as top experts. More than 50 posters and papers will be presented. Three symposia: Sweden (Kamran Namdar), UK (British Council), UK & Poland (David Oldroyd & Mike Bottery); two workshops; PhD Seminar will start at 1000, run by Mike Bottery. A good range of Polish educators will attend. Roman introduced the programme session by session and the three study visit venues. A newcomers’ meeting with DO in the breakfast room at 0815 Friday will be advertised and will give newcomers a chance to meet one another. No lunch is available Thursday at the hotel but something will be prepared for the two school visits, but not for the museum visitors.The Board commended Roman and his team for the excellent quality of the booklet. They also congratulated Roman on receiving his professorship in June.
- The Polish Context – Briefly Roman mentioned current problems for Polish educators. More than 20% of school heads in Krakow have lost their jobs due to new reforms by the PiS government which has affected the choice of study visit venues which Roman introduced. A new law on higher education may affect university educators’ careers in the months ahead
- Jurmala 2016 Conference Book – Signe introduced the book with 9 papers which is small but the same size as the previous book from the Antwerp conference. She distributed copies to the Board. The other copies will be distributed after the Friday Keynote by conference staff to all were registered and were given conference bags.
- Future conferences and Board Members – these are now clear for the next three years and Norway will provide the organiser of the 2020 conference following 2018 Belgium and 2019 Slovenia. Tim Hurley who is leaving the Board on Saturday, thanked the Board for the positive experience and their constant desire to improve our network.
- VPS succession – DO will hand over the VPS role at this conference to Karol Sadleir, the next generation, much more ICT savvy. He and Tim will assist her induction. DO has already handed over to Karol the large electronic ENIRDELM archive compiled over many years. He expressed his expectation that Karol would be much more skilled in supporting the Board to move ahead and take advantage of the digital modes of communication working in close contact with Sebastjan and with Kristin.
- Mailing list – Roman and his staff will add the new members to the master list after the conference and send the electronic version to David & Karol S.
- Newsletter – despite the absence of feedback to the mailed out newsletter, the notion of abandoning the newsletter for a more interactive website exchange was dismissed as premature. The Board were encouraged by DO to make personal reminders to specific potential contributors. David & Karol will lobby contributors at the conference to make or provide inputs emphasising reports of special interest as well as country and personal matters. November Newsletter Deadline is 15 November 2017.
- Website – Sebastjan reported on his liaison with Markku to make the platform more interactive and his institution would cover costs. Kristen reported on the dedicated website plan for Antwerp and would liaise with Sebastjan and Roman would provide contacts with the creator of the Krakow dedicated website.
- ENIRDELM Twitter initative – tweeting has so far been done by one person. Kristin manages an ENIRDELM account for all participants. She reported lack of use of the ENIRDELM hashtag to give feedback about the conference and other matters. Ways of pushing on the use of Twitter were discussed. Tim advocated a greater push for recruiting and involving younger people and to maintain an institutional memory for older participants. Karol S, Sebastjan and Kristin would discuss improvements. At the Annual Meeting on Saturday the use of ENIRDELM twitter would be encouraged.
Next Board Meeting – 1700-1730 Saturday 16 Sept., post-conference debriefing.
David Oldroyd, VPS (retiring), Krakow, 14.09.2016
_______________________________________________________________________________________
ENIRDELM BOARD MEETING No. 2, Malahide, 19.09.2015
Present: Signe Neimane, Kristin Vanlommel, Tim Hurley, Roman Dorczak, Jukka Ahonen, David Oldroyd
- Next Board meeting
Friday 5 Feb and Saturday 6 February 2016 Fly back Sunday 7 Feb.
Transport will be arranged by SN if flight details are sent.
Karol Binon to be co-opted when necessary. His institution will be the venue for the 2018 conference. Roman can bring colleagues & 2017 conference organising team members to the Riga Board meeting.
- Next conference Theme
DO to send feedback on theme proposals from the participants from the final session.
- Conference Website
Markku will help if necessary; TH will send to SN contact details for the Dublin provider.
- Conference ThemeThe website was checked for previous titles.
- Book Exhibition for the 25th AnniversaryDO to set up an archive of proceedings publications at Jagiellonian University in Krakow with Roman.
- Addendum to the ENIRDELM HistorySN to contact each of the 5 past conference organisers to do a 2-page draft by the end of October to be sent to DO to be placed in the newsletter and on the website.
- Reconsidering the protocolsSealed box for written nominations to be considered at the next Board meeting and the protocols modified to avoid such future conclusions.
Possible to co-opt Kirsten given the embarrassment at the election today.
TH to use newsletter to ask for members to suggest improvements.
Meeting ended 1706. D.Oldroyd, Malahide, 19.09.15
ENIRDELM BOARD MEETING No. 1, Malahide, 17.09.2015
Present: TH, SN, MB, JA, RD, DO.
Welcome
TH welcomed all the Board and vowed to make the conference its usual success and invited the Board’s support. The programme was delivered from the printer only the day before with a slight error in the title. The Board was issued with orange identifiers.
- Minutes of the 7 February Meeting & Conference Briefing
Copies were distributed. TH went through the minutes. Keynote speaker slots were adjusted to accommodate Dr Hislop’s obligations. Backgrounds of John West-Burnham and Sharon Todd were introduced. No posters were submitted. Student presentations were not to be offered due to competing projects. The website for the conference was very costly but effective using a professional template. Business cards were used to promote the conference helping people to understand our acronym.
The minutes of the February meeting were accepted unanimously by the Board.
Irish teacher education is in a state of transition with much reorganisation being implemented and thus many potential participants have sent their apologies. The conference will be opened in the Castle by the mayor of Fingal as the Ministers have been diverted by current events. Free access to the castle gardens will be available to participants on Friday afternoon along with a tour of Malahide. Only 12 people have signed up for the school visits and the schools are disappointed. This raises the question about whether this part of the programme is needed in future. This can be put to the participants. The Boyne Valley Tour is connected with Malahide and the Talbot family.
MB will retire from the Board this year to allow induction of a new member. TH expressed his thanks for the great help provided by MB and JA. TH will present ENIRDELM protocols to participants on Friday morning. Christen Jordet will present a look back on Saturday and DP will pay a tribute to Jaroslav Kalous.
2. 2016 Latvia Conference Plans
Sept 15 -17 will be the dates. The hotel is booked in Jurmala as close as Malahide is to Dublin. It is a coastal resort with easy access to Riga. The organising committee involves 4 organisations: Riga City, Jurmala City Council and the University of Latvia. The theme is not yet agreed but should be linked to our 25th anniversary (looking back and forward 25 years in each direction) to be further discussed in February. SN has brought a video for presentation Saturday.
- New Board Member Nomination
TH showed the slides he had prepared to show participants to clarify the procedure
- Round Table Questions
Three questions were proposed and approved.
5. Secretariat Issues (See Appendix)
Markku is willing to continue as webmaster and hopes that more new content could be added. He will try to attend next year.
Rosemary will update the mailing list with the new participants in Malahide.
The mailing list will be given to SN to allow contacts next year. Retirees will be considered at the next Board meeting. Next year we should look at attracting a newer generation.
- 6. Conference ProceedingsTH congratulated JA on the high quality of the Vantaa Proceedings that sets the bar very high.
Next Board meeting 1700 Saturday, 19.09.15.
David Oldroyd, VPS, 17.09.15, Malahide
Appendix: Malahide Board meeting 17.09.15 – Secretariat Issues
Membership
There have been a couple of requests to be added to the mailing list and I have sent the updated master list to Rosemary who, I believe has used it to contact members.
I will continue to maintain this in my accustomed manner unless there is now a better and quicker way available.
Website & ENIRDELM blog
Since Markku set up the new www.enirdelm.net website, there has been little response or comment. We have only 10 followers and only Markku and I have added anything. Clearly the website offers a window to our network. As I now give priority to the www.case4all.info, it might be worth looking for a tech-savvy volunteer to join us in making the website more popular. Perhaps we can solicit opinion during this conference about whether and how we should improve the use of the website? We have no minutes on the website from November 2014 or the February Board meetings as yet. Apologies for being remiss in failing to chase these up.
Newsletter
Gerald contributed to the April Newsletter and is happy to continue as Co-editor, despite his inability to attend conferences at present due to domestic obligations. There has been virtually no response to the April 2015 issue and I have no idea if people read the newsletter. I would ask the Board to make their best efforts to encourage people during the conference to consider making a contribution.
EPNSL
Eric Verbiest has confirmed that previous assessment holds that ENIRDELM should break its connexion with EPNSL.
CASE Initiative
The loss of Jaroslav who was to use the www.case4all.info resource platform (now over 250 entries) with his students at Charles University stymied our first breakthrough into the learning arena. Mike Bottery expressed interest in using it with his students at Hull that I will follow up. Kamran and I hope that our symposium on Saturday may generate more interest.
DELACA – Developing Leadership Capacity
This initiative will present a report to the conference in Malahide.
ENIRDELM History Update
Riga will be our 25th anniversary and thought should be given to an update. Rosemary requested a copy from me when the pdf on the website failed to download. I have asked Markku to check why. Is there anyone wishing to take this forward?
David Oldroyd, Tychy, 16.09.2015
ENIRDELM BOARD MEETING No. 1, Helsinki, 18.09.2014
PRESENT: JA, MB, MU, TH, SN, DO + two observers
Tim Hurley welcomed his two colleagues Dee Coogan & Rosemary Cadwell who will help in Dublin
1. CONFERENCE ARRANGEMENTS:
Jukka introduced the conference booklet:
The Hostess will be Deputy Mayor Elina Lehto-Haggroth, City of Vantaa
Keynote presenters are Prof Pasi Sahlberg and Daisy Christodoulou
DO was asked to announce and run a session for newcomers.
Three Board members (SN, TH & MB) were given instructions about chairing the round table (8-10 people) sessions “World Café” at 1715 on Thursday which would involve 30 min. rotating activities in the Heureka Science Centre. Disciplined time management was needed.
Portoroz Proceedings to be distributed after Pasi’s keynote in the “Jordet” Meeting Room – one book per person.
2. WEBMASTER SUCCESSION:
Markku Antinluoma has acted as webmaster for the conference website and the conference book which is now on the web. Memory sticks will be distributed at the first keynote presentation. Markku has been asked if he will assume the role of ENIRDELM webmaster and will answer shortly following discussions with Thomas Soderberg. Markku will be briefed by David about the scope of the work which is not too demanding.
Arrangements for the conference proceedings are in place. Pekka, Seppo and Kauko Hamalainen will be involved. All papers are not strictly relevant to the conference theme, but all were accepted for presentation.
Around 85 people will attend with local participants opting in and out.
3. PORTOROZ CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS
Mateja reported that after a full year of work following the Oct 2013 deadline, the proceedings have been published as a regular issue of the academic journal – the first in English. 13 papers (200 pages) were published following two blind reviews. Five were rejected following the review process. Final editing was done by English language native speakers. The journal has open access at http://en.solazaravnatelje.si/publishing/leadership/leadership-in-education-s2014/ (see full issue at the bottom of the page). Individual papers will be distributed to authors in pdf.
4. BOARD MEMBERSHIP SUCCESSION:
Mualla Aksu will resign from the Board and the possible person from Macedonia is not coming to the Vantaa conference. Signe suggested a colleague from the Czech Republic. New Polish participants might be possible future organisers. Nominations should be channelled through Jukka.
5. DUBLIN CONFERENCE 17-19.09.2015
Keynotes to be decided, but the Board asked to make suggestions. Theme relating to “Learning and leadership in/for the future”, depending on the keynote speaker emphases. Venue to be at Grand Hotel Malahide, a small coastal village 15 minutes from the airport and 20 minutes by commuter train to the centre of Dublin. A video will be shown at the final session in Vantaa. An email address has been set up to receive suggestions from potential participants: enirdelm@ecdrumcondra.ie
Rosemary and Dee will be happy to receive suggestions from the Board.
[The meeting concluded at 1130 without discussion of the VPS Report that is added below – Appendix 1.]
ENIRDELM BOARD MEETING No. 2, Helsinki, 20.09.2014
Present: TH, JA, MB, SN, RD, DO.
1. TH welcomed to the Board Roman Dorczak who was elected to the Board at the final session of Conference. and thanked Mualla for broadening our horizons and organising the wonderful Antalya conference. He undertook to maintain the same high standard in Dublin as in previous conferences.
2. JA thanked all for helping him to achieve, as a free-lancer, success in organising the conference – the fist time that this has been done without an institutional base.
3. Next Board meeting – 6 Feb 2015 at the Grand Hotel, Malahide. TH will provide and fund accommodation for two nights on 6-7 Feb and colleagues would travel home on 8 Feb. Members would pay their own travel costs. Gerald Dunning might be invited. [NB. JA’s announcement that Gerald had volunteered to become VPS was in error as he had only agreed to co-editing the Newsletter]. DO was asked to enquire if Gerald might consider the larger responsibility.
4. DO was asked to send the electronic version of the Portoroz proceedings to all membersalong with an invitation to look at the new content of the website once inserted (power point presentations, New Board details and other new content)
5. JA will ask Tarja to send DO the list of authors for the Helsinki proceedings and also the electronic list of conference participants. JA and the team will remove the names of local participants who would not want to be on the mailing list. DO would then update the mailing list by incorporating new members to the existing list and removing any on the list whom the Board knew no longer needed to be there (deceased, retired, etc.)
6. DO asked Board members to contribute by 14 Nov to the Nov Newsletter.
7. Markku and Roman would be asked to send a photo and short biography for the website as soon as possible to DO based on the models already on the website’s Board tab. DO would edit them and ask Markku to add them to the website.
8. TH would look at setting up social network media (Twitter? Facebook?) links for Enirdelm in the hope of attracting a younger generation of participants to ENIRDELM.
9. DO would type up the feedback from the final session of national groups for the Board’s consideration [See Appendix 2]
DO, 21.09.2014
Appendix 1: REPORT OF VOLUNTARY PERMANENT SECRETARY
CONFERENCE RUN-IN
Liaison with Jukka and the conference team operated efficiently with some queries addressed to me passed on and dealt with expeditiously. Just a few participants assumed that the VPS was the first point of contact, despite the information on the Conference web-site. The site was very well done and user-friendly.
MEMBERSHIP & ACTIVATORS
I have added the up-to-dated list of 218 members as an appendix to this document. Rejected mailings are indicated and have been removed from the condensed list for mailing. We still need to remove addresses of those whom we know will clearly play no part in our network in future. It might be worth trying again to recruit one or two specific activators per county, especially if they can find material for the newsletter and possibly report to the Board or a designated Board member a couple of times a year to assess what they have been able to do in their respective homelands.
PROTOCOLS & MINUTES
The Admin tab on the ENIRDELM web-site was amended following the January Board Meeting.
SECRETARIAT ISSUES
Institutional base and new VPS: No offers so far forthcoming following requests in the Apl 13 Newsletter. Finding an institutional base for the Secretariat with some additional technical capacity and time to support our networking remains an issue. If we had a Permanent Secretary who was still active and institutionally based, this might make grant-seeking more effective. I am still able to continue my lengthy stop-gap role, as my faculties currently deteriorate only slowly with old age. In my January report I suggested that in Sept., it would still be a good year to hand on the reins, so we might again appeal to friends at the conference.
Newsletter: Gerald Dunning has agreed to co-edit and I hope to activate him after the conference to help with the Nov 2014 edition. I hope all Board members will make a contribution. I do not know if he has been invited to join Tibor‘s proposed EDITORIAL Board for the Proceedings. Dean Bowles has failed to respond to several emails and did not contribute his usual news fro America in the Apl 2014 Newsletter. I wonder if his age has caught up with him? I can myself keep up with US events and do a piece to fill the gap if we decide to maintain the tradition. I encourage the Board to try and raise the contribution rate to the newsletter above the current estimated 5% of ENIRDELM friends.
Proposed Editorial Board: It would be good to receive an update on where we are at with this development . It would be a good idea to have some ENIRDELM members as reviewers of the papers depending on the needs of the organiser/publisher and the number of papers.
Publishing, RDI network & Karstanje prize proposal: Any further developments on these issues raised at Portoroz?
- The creation and protocols for an Editorial Board to handle the publication of conference proceedings
- The creation of a Research, Development and Innovation Initiative incorporating institutions that might collaborate on a variety of projects
- A prize award to honour the memory of the l Peter Karstanje and his contribution to ENIRDELM and educational leadership in general.
EPNoSL: Eric had no additional information for the Apl Newsletter, but will attend a final meeting of the EPNoSL in Nice, France in 2015. The Nov 2013 newsletter included the following link to the EPNoSL website and platform which seems to be a useful resource:
http://us7.campaign-archive1.com/?u=2f65a1b13ed3a63bbe5bdd7c1&id=da8025fe93&e=[UNIQID]
Should ENIRDELM join Facebook and/or Twitter?: There have been no responses to this question posed in Portoroz and in the Nov Newsletter. I know Tim has ideas that he might wish to elaborate.
Broadening our mission?: After 23 years we have promoted a Euro-centric awareness now being sharpened and threatened with the conflict in the Ukraine. Personally my own concerns have broadened urgently due to the evident approach of multiple global crises that some of us in ENIRDELM have addressed since the Uppsala Conference in 2009. Is it time to ask whether our overall ENIRDELM mission might be broadened and become more ‘world-centric’, given the urgency of these concerns that Kamran, Jaroslav and I are addressing in our workshop on Saturday afternoon?
WEB SITE AND BLOGS
We urgently need to find a replacement for Thomas, (see above re Markku) as well as publicly thank him for his excellent contribution as webmaster. As I reported in January, our members continue their reluctance to go digital, reflecting the marginal role that the network plays in their schedules beyond the conference event. I have attempted to revitalise the CoRK initiative, this time with a Community Action for Spaceship Earth (CASE) Initiative, as an outcome of the workshop we ran in Protoroz and we now have a dedicated website www.case4all.info . It contains much high quality user-friendly material, but so far, I have failed to connect many followers.
The CoRk blog http://educationsustainability.blogspot.ca/ and the ENIRDELM blog http://enirdelm.blogspot.com/ still exist, if barely active, even though incorporated in the ENIRDELM website.
David Oldroyd, ENIRDELM Voluntary Permanent Secretary, 18.09.14
Appendix 2: FEEDBACK FROM THE NATIONAL GROUPS AT THE CONFERENCE FINAL SESSION
Things to keep:
- The current balance between types of session
- The small size of the number of participants to sustain the friendly culture
- Relevant theme relating to topical issues from our rapidly changing contexts and the conference location
- The diversity of activities
- The trust-based approach
Suggestions for improvement:
- Panel discussion between keynote speakers/core presenters
- Discussion groups based on roles of participants
- Combined sessions of papers
- Longer workshops
- Reflection time or etcetera time
- Recruit younger participants
- Recruit more practitioners
- Reinstate the preliminary session for PhD students
- Encourage kindergarten practitioners to become involved
- Ask all practitioners to invite one additional practitioner to Dublin
- Focus on implications for action and practice as well as research
- Invite more non-Europeans
- Invite participants to reflect on ENIRDELM’s vision and mission
- Document the best practice in organising the conference to ensure ‘organisational memory’
Comment by Mateja:
[M1]I believe that not all suggestions can be taken into consideration for all conferences/organizers. One of the good things about the conferences for me is that they are different, not following the exact same schedule and format. Some of the suggestions stay the same over the years – i.e. inviting non-Europeans, recruiting younger, practitioners, etc and those are again not dependent on the organizer and Board members only. But we should keep them in mind and do whatever one can.