Pedagogic points

I was amazed to see that under the extraordinary headline "Confusion over whether teaching itself should count towards the RAE" (THES, October 1) appeared an article written by myself.

I would never have made such a claim. No one envisages that teaching might count as research, and this misleading headline only adds to the confusion there is about a quite different question: whether research into teaching should count as disciplinary research. The article argued that it should.

For those of us who are struggling against the odds to bring teaching and research into a closer relationship, it is not helpful to have our case distorted by such a misleading idea that teaching itself should count as research.

Stephen Rowland Director, higher education research centre Sheffield University