ABSTRACT
The two national surveys In chapter 8 it was shown how, when teaching a topic like ‘Insects’, which requires teachers to have a secure foundation of knowledge themselves, children’s own conceptions could be unclear when the teacher was not himself sure what characteristics distinguished insects from such creatures as arachnids and gastropods. During the Leverhulme Primary Project we undertook two national surveys of 901 and 433 primary teachers respectively. In the companion book to this one, Learning to Teach (Bennett and Carré 1993), there is a full description of the research undertaken by Neville Bennett and his team into student teachers’ subject knowledge. This chapter describes the research conducted as part of the class management enquiries into how primary teachers cope with teaching a fresh topic for the first time, when their own subject knowledge is insecurely founded.
