Seeking answers on lecturer training

Jonathan Osborne's letter (February p20) in response to Joao Magueijo's article on university-lecturer training (December 2009 pp16–17) surely cannot go unanswered. Contrary to what Osborne claims, Magueijo did not say that we should use lectures because students like them – in fact, he advocated the use of exactly the "interactive, discursive methods" that Osborne favours as alternatives to traditional lecture courses. The real point of Magueijo's article was that lecturer training as currently practised in the UK is a waste of time – not that lecturers need no training at all.