Letter: roles for research (2)

The divorce of teaching from research ( THES , Letters November 10) is often stark. My suggestion is to make published research rather than popular texts the starting point for teaching a topic. This has useful implications: you have to teach students a bit of critical vocabulary and viewpoints to evaluate the stuff. Students also get an insight into how academic careers are developed (or not) and how ideas have political implications.

Chris Hackley
Endon, Stoke-on-Trent