ADVISORY BOARD OF THE SUBJECT CENTRE FOR LANGUAGES, LINGUISTICS AND AREA STUDIES

MEETING ON 15 JANUARY 2002 IN CILT, LONDON

Present
Professor Richard Towell (Chair) RT	Dr Hilary Footitt HF	
Janet Bartle JB	Elspeth Jones EJ	
Professor David Bickerton DB	Professor Michael Kelly MHK	
Dr Keith Brown KB	Dr Lid King LK	
Alison Dickens AD	Professor Rosalind Marsh RM	
Dawn Ebbrell DE	Professor Ulrike Meinhof UM	
Professor Dick Ellis RE	Dr Paul Rowlett PR	
Ray Satchell RS	Professor David Walker DW	
Vicky Wright VW	Dr Roel Vismans RV	
Professor Yasir Sulieman YS	Derek Winslow DW	
Elizabeth Ashurst (Secretary) EJA		

In attendance
Dr Brenda Johnstone (Subject Centre evaluator)
Professor David Robey (Member of LTSN Steering Group)

1.	Apologies for absence

Professor Judith Bryce	Professor Marianne Howarth	
Professor Ralph Penny	Professor Rhys Williams	
Professor Anne Stevens	Professor Bertie O Corrain	
Dr Neil Wynn	Professor Pandeli Glavanis	

2.	Minutes of the last meeting and matters arising

The minutes were accepted as being a true record of proceedings.

Policy formation
It was noted that the Nuffield Languages Programme, CILT and the LNTO were participating in government discussions on language strategy.  The Nuffield Languages Programme was also funding a number of policy orientated research activities. Nuffield, CILT and the LNTO were all considering ways of contributing to raising the profile of languages and maintaining the momentum of the European Year of Languages (EYL).  

National Languages Steering Group
LK reported that after a period of inactivity over the summer and autumn of 2001, momentum had now been regained.  Baroness Ashton had taking over the chairing of the group from Jackie Smith.  Hilary Footitt noted that the Group were concentrating on particular themes the order of which was : early language learning, employability and HE.  Before the meeting of the Steering Group to discuss HE, a UCML focus group would be convened which would consider the approach to be taken.  

It was agreed that it would be important to achieve the coherence between sectors recommended in the Nuffield Languages Inquiry.  

E languages
Martin Harris had stepped down as Chair of the E languages Steering Group. MHK reported that he was to lead a bid to the e University which was the only possible source of funding for such a project.  The project would be led by EFL with Modern Languages as a loss making ‘add on’.  He was at present in negotiation with the e university and the World Wide University Network (WUN).  The Subject Centre would have an important role maintaining dialogue with the Embassies who, it is hoped, would be an important part of the project.  

The project of the ‘language village’ being led by HF was not moving forward at present.  However, DR noted that, with the increasing dominance of the widening participation agenda, this would be likely to be carried forward at a future date.  Disappointment was expressed that HEFCE had not seen the e languages project as an intrinsic part of the widening participation agenda.  

It was reported that the e languages project was a product of energetic lobbying by UCML and the Subject Centre and that there were no similar projects for linguistics or other disciplines.  

Mapping membership of the Advisory Board
The composition of the Advisory Board was reviewed.  It was noted that the proportion of members from each of the regions (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland) was appropriate.  However it was felt that ratio of female members to male members should be higher.  A comparison with the national picture for HE staff could be made with surveys carried out by the AUT and NATFHE.  It was agreed that, when members of the board were being nominated in future, nominations from under represented groups would be encouraged.  

3.	Reports from the three centres

Written reports had been submitted to the board so representatives from the centres were invited to highlight particular aspects of their activity

Southampton
MHK reported that the Subject Centre was trying to produce a programme that ‘hit the target’ by scheduling events at a time when colleagues were thinking about that particular theme.  

The Literary and Cultural Studies Special Interest Group had been established in November to cater for a section of the constituency which could not easily be served by either languages or area studies.  At the meeting of the Group in November, members had offered apposite recommendations for future activity. 

Benchmarking meeting 1 November 2001:  This had been convened by the Subject Centre for the Chairs of the three benchmarking groups.  It had been helpful in clarifying the relationship particularly between the languages and the area studies statements.  
It was reported that at the Swansea Roadshow, Fiona Crozier of the QAA had promised a statement on the role of the National Qualifications Framework for Institution Wide Language Programmes (IWLPs).  This had not yet been received but would be discussed with Fiona Crozier at the final meeting of the languages benchmarking group.  
RT urged Subject Centre staff to remember the need to penetrate the regions when organising events.  However, it was generally agreed that London was the easiest place to reach for most of the country and that events organised in London usually had participants from the greatest geographical spread.  It was noted that a Linguistics event had been held in Salford recently but it had been very expensive to run.  

Hull
RV reported that the Hull team had a lot of events planned none of which were in London.  They were organising two institutional visits, one in Aberdeen and one in Coventry.  Development of the website had included the final transfer of all CTI material to the Subject Centre website including Internet resources for Language Teachers and Learners.  This had always been a popular part of the CTI site so when its transfer to the Subject Centre was complete, the number of hits on the Subject Centre website ahd almost doubled.  The software database was being redesigned and its content updated.

Refocussing of Hull’s role in the Subject Centre
MHK reported that he and RV had recently been negotiating to refocus the role of Hull for the next academic year.  Their role from that date would principally be the dissemination of pedagogical approaches to C&IT.  Overall responsibility for the website would be transferred to Southampton.

Cilt
DE reported that the HE Resources collection was continually being updated.  The CILT catalogue was now available on line.    The most recent Information Sheet to be produced this year was entitled ‘Pedagogical Research’.  A new library publicity leaflet had also been produced.  

MHK and DE were to meet Dick Johnstone of Scottish CILT in March to discuss the establishment of a Subject Centre resources collection at Scottish CILT in Stirling.  

Distributed sites
DR asked if there were difficulties for the Subject Centre with a geographically distributed infrastructure.  MHK noted that this worked best when each centre had a clear idea of its roles and responsibilities.  The website was the most difficult area as it was viewed by the LTSN as being of strategic importance.  It was therefore considered important to have the management of it in the lead site-hence the transfer of responsibililty for the website to Southampton.  This would allow the C&IT Centre in Hull to focus on their strengths and be less prone to the difficulties of communication across distributed sites  RV endorsed the view that it would be important for the team in Hull to build on its strengths.  LK noted that CILT were experienced in working with partners who were not in close proximity.  The success of the Subject Centre could be attributed to the good communications at operational level between the centres.  

The Subject Centre programme was commended by the board.  Areas which might usefully be covered when planning future activities might be community languages, heritage languages, sign language, plurilingualism.  Although there had been no activity with a specific focus on EFL, it was felt that given the limits of Subject Centre, this was not a priority as the EFL community were well served.  However there was much scope for the modern languages community to learn from the work being done in EFL and that there had not been enough collaboration to date. 

4.	Update from Specialist Group Chairs

Area Studies
DE reported that the work of the group had been progressing steadily.  He welcomed the fact that the LTSN were now recognising the diversity of Area Studies and had convened a meeting of representatives of cognate centres.  There would be opportunities to forge links with these centres and raise issues such as interdisciplinarity and globalisation.  The Subject Centre would be bidding for additional funding to support Area Studies.  The e mail base had increased owing to the work of AD.  The group were looking forward to the next event which was an open meeting to discuss marketing Area Studies.  The meeting would provide an opportunity for the Area Studies community to inform the Subject Centre of the kind of activities they would like to see happening.  

It would be important to develop strategies to engage the ‘small’ area studies constituencies.

The decision to organise sessions within the annual conference was welcomed.  It was agreed that it was difficult to make effective contact with the Area Studies community as colleagues teaching in Area Studies programmes were spread across many different departments.  Trying to engage colleagues through subject associations has had only limited success.  Members of the Advisory Board were urged to act as effective conduits of information about the Subject Centre to the subject associations.   

Linguistics 
KB reported that there had been two meetings since the last meeting of the Advisory Board.  The group continues to work effectively and is broadly representative. Chairs of all the three key Linguistics associations (LAGB, BAAL and BAAP) are members of the Specialist Group.  

A Postgraduate Information Day and a Seminar in Salford had been organised.  An event at the University of the West of England as well as one in Edinburgh were being planned.  Research Training continued to be of interest to the Linguistics community.  DR noted that as the RAE would probably continue, there could well be a role for Subject Centres to provide collaborative research training.  

The two projects being managed by the Subject Centre had involvement from linguistics: Paul Meara was contributing to the Resources Bank with a bank of multiple choice questions which colleagues would no doubt find useful. 

Feedback from linguistics events suggests that colleagues welcome the opportunity to discuss issues of concern; the group would be happy to advocate more events if there were sufficient funding to hold them.  

Languages
The languages specialist group was providing a useful function as a sounding board and think tank for proposed Subject Centre activity.  Meetings would be taking place on 22 February and 27 June and a telephone conference had taken place in November.  There had been an event on Curriculum 2000 and one on the European Language Portfolio before Christmas.  The next key event was the marketing languages workshop in March.  

The Specialist Group felt that it was important that quality of activity took precedence over quantity.  It would also be important to be able to quantify impact.  EJA reported that systemic evidence of success was being gathered and was required by the LTSN executive.  

It was recommended that in future meetings Chairs produced written reports in advance of the meeting.  

5.	Marketing Languages and Area Studies

Information about the marketing pack had been provided in the documentation for the meeting.  The pack was being produced in collaboration with the embassies and the French Embassy had also supported the initiative with a generous financial donation.  It was hoped that part of the pack would be a video produced by Leeds Metropolitan University in which employers and school children were interviewed about their attitudes to languages.  

One copy of the pack would be sent ot each institution teaching language degree programmes.  It was agreed that this initiative could be widenend with extra funding but that this first stage should be completed before extending the project to cover schools and careers officers.  

6.	2002 Conference-Setting the Agenda:  Languages, Linguistics and Area Studies in Higher Education

DE reported that 90 proposals had been received following the call for papers.  The provisional programme would be published shortly.  There had already been a good number of enquiries about the conference.  There would be 2 –3 plenary addresses each day.  Proceedings would be published the year after the conference.  Board members were encouraged to disseminate publicity about the conference.  There would be free places for 6 postgraduate students and there would also be discounts.  

7.	Collaboration Programme in Modern Languages in Higher Education

DR, Chair of the Collaboration Programme Steering Group reported on the initiative.  The programme had been awarded almost half a million pounds over three years to promote and test collaboration in a variety of ways.  In addition to the outputs of the projects which make up the programme, it was hoped that the Collaboration Programme would have important strategic implications and would help to develop a dialogue between the languages community and HEFCE.  

Despite the fact that the programme had only been launched in October 2001, it had been subject to an evaluation by consultants recruited by HEFCE who were commissioned to evaluate the Restructuring and Collaboration Fund.  The Collaboration Programme in Modern Languages was unique in being the only example of a national subject based collaboration.  Since HEFCE do not have a specific collaboration model, it was felt to be important for the languages community to take the initiative rather than have restructuring and collaboration imposed on them by Senior Management.  

8.	After Subject Review: the role of the Subject Centre in Quality Enhancement and relations with the QAA.

MHK noted that Subject Review was probably over with a minority of exception and that QAA would be focussing on Institutional Review with the Universities dealing with review at Subject Level.  The board were asked to consider whether the Subject Centre should support the processes of internal subject review.  Should the Subject Centre be involved in national overview reports?  

EJ noted that there was a role for  the Subject Centre in disseminating information about the benchmarking statements, for example, but should be careful about getting too closely involved in Subject Review.  

There might be a role for the Subject Centre to assist departments as they develop Programme Specifications.  The Subject Centre might advise and give examples of good practice.  However it was stressed that the Subject Centre should guard against taking the role of an inspectorate.  
DR reported that the LTSN Executive were keen to keep assessment and enhancement of quality separate.  It may also be possible for the Subject Centre to have a role in enhancing the role of external assessors.  

9.	Post RAE: the role of the Subject Centre in pedagogical research

MHK stated that it appeared there had been very little pedagogical research reported in the RAE with the possible exception of linguistics.  The RAE had not encouraged pedagogical research.  The amount of pedagogical research submitted to the French panel, for example, had halved since 1996.  Colleagues did not have the confidence to submit research unless it was of a high calibre.  

It was felt that those on the education RAE panel would not necessarily be good judges of pedagogical research in languages.  

It was also felt that there was little research training offered to postgraduates in Languages.  There was teacher training and applied linguistics training given to EFL students but the research in EFL was often action research.  
DR noted that one of the projects in the Collaboration Programme which was to develop a database of research in languages would have important strategic value.

It was suggested that the Subject Centre might have discussions with the Education Subject Centre on this issue.  

10.	AOB

No items were taken under AOB

11.	Date of the next meeting

This will take place on 31 May.  The time will be confirmed.