Interview with Professor Alison Phipps
Alison Phipps
"It was when the graduate students in the School of Education presented me with a folder and bag containing a wooden box, some of their own poetry and short stories, a graphic design and a short film all representing what they thought of my teaching and as their submission to the TEA panel that I knew something was afoot. It was such a lovely surprise and very humbling to read their stories and see how strongly they felt about working in a team together with other academics to create a grounded graduate school for everyone concerned.
"I don't think my methods are entirely conventional, but they are based on developing an understanding relationship with each group of students and helping them discover a direction for their work. Students will find this for themselves in so many creative ways which are always surprising and always seem to need patience and humour on both sides.
"I often ask students to find ways of 'sending up' the course or a particular aspect of their study as a parody to help them really develop critical skills by using comedy. Once I discovered a student keeping notes of a lecture down one side of the page and a description of my own gestures and accent and verbal ticks on the other. It turned out she was going to use this in a short sketch at the end of the course. It gets harder every year to keep an open space for this kind of teaching and learning available to students so the award helps me keep faith and trust the wisdom of those who inspired me to believe in education."