ABSTRACT
In the 1993 OFSTED Report on ‘Curriculum organisation and classroom practice in primary schools’, HMI noted: ‘The vast majority of primary schools remain firmly committed to grouping aspects of different subjects together to be taught as “topics” ’ (para. 7). In this chapter we look at one explanation for the development of an integrated ‘topic’ approach to the primary curriculum. In a fairly large-scale survey of what ‘topic’ work meant in primary schools, Eggleston and Kerry arrived at the following working definition: ‘Topic work includes all those areas of the curriculum (other than basic reading and number skills) which are explored in a thematic way. Topics may be (predominantly) scientific, mathematical, or in the field of the humanities; or they may be multi-disciplinary.’ Their study showed, however, that, in the majority (over 70 per cent) of schools which they surveyed, ‘topic’ work took the form of one of the two ‘cameos’ illustrated below.
