Pedagogic points

Stephen Rowland and Alan Jenkins (Teaching, THES, October 1) are rightly concerned about the status of research into teaching and learning in higher education.

One intriguing solution to raising the status of pedagogic research, adopted by the Hong Kong University Grants Committee in their RAE, is to identify and measure, on the basis of submitted outputs, contributions to each of Boyer's forms of scholarship: discovery, integration, application and teaching.

For RAE 2001, it is not too late for each panel to state that it will consider discipline-based pedagogic research in the same way that it will treat research into any other sub-discipline. If the panel lacks the expertise, it could appoint a pedagogic adviser, as some panels, such as geography, are already proposing.

Mick Healey Director, Geography Discipline Network Cheltenham and Gloucester College of Higher Education