Dear Colleagues,

We are approaching the end of another term in what is always a busy time of the year as we move from admitting a new First Year cohort to recruiting and selecting students for next year so, I will be brief in my comments

As ever we have had a busy events programme and I would like to thank Luisa for organising our Journal Club and also extend my thanks to our speakers for taking time to identify and then speak to us about recent work of interest to us all.  These events continue to be popular in attracting a regular audience.  If you have been to a Journal Club before then do come along.  If you have a paper you would like to present Luisa will be pleased to hear from you.  Thank you to everybody who has suggested seminar speakers for our seminars this term and given us ideas for next term.  We have had some very stimulating presentations and some audiences.  Widening participation has been a bit of a theme this year and as a follow-up to Jan Cleland’s talk, Paul Tiffin from Hull York Medical School will be coming to speak to us about some of his interesting work in this area.  In June we will welcoming one of the authors on the BERA guideline on ethics in educational research.  Further details of these, and other events, will be sent to you in the New Year.   In the meantime there are still some spaces in our seminar programme so if there is somebody you would like to invite please let me know.

In this issue of the newsletter, I have a written a short introduction to a Research Report recently published by BERA on Close-to-Practice research.  The findings and conclusions from this report are of interest to all of us engaged in research into practice so please take a look.  I have also written a short piece on proposals from AHE to revive subject centres.  There is a consultation process underway so it would be good if some of us could spare some time to contribute to these conversations.

All that remains for me to do is to wish you all and very Happy Christmas and New Year and a restful break after this very busy semester.

Prof Steve McHanwell, Director of the ERDP network