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Your excellent piece on teaching rewards is both timely and useful ("Pedagogy a poor second in promotions", 10 December). Clearly, very few academics would challenge the fact that good-quality research and teaching are mutually supportive. What is more debatable is the time it takes to get any real interest in higher education teaching and learning properly recognised.

For example, Cambridge University Press was brave enough to publish in hardback my Instructional Planning Systems in 1971. However, it took the wonders of 21st-century digital technology to bring out the paperback edition some 38 years later!

Related work that pioneered similar development-control case studies in the same period had to be promoted and published by the Local Government Training Board. There is a real need to quicken and improve the impact of innovative university instructional systems worldwide.

John L. Taylor, Bramley HEI professor of educational development.