John Kinder - Masters Supervision Award

'Excellence in Teaching - what is it?'

Especially in these days of expanding work loads, it becomes even more important to devote sufficient amounts of uninterrupted time to each student. The student should feel that they have the time - and that I have the time-for them to express whatever is on their mind. It is all too easy to devote the first 40 minutes of an hour-long meeting to discussing corrections to the latest piece of work and then dedicate five minutes or so to the next stage of the student's work and then run out of time: many things the student wants to say may seem to them to be less important or urgent than the actual mechanics of the research and the writing process. But those "unimportant" matters (how they are feeling, the big picture, personal matters etc) must be allowed their due time, if only because they will probably not go away by themselves and may ultimately blow up with unfortunate consequences.