ABSTRACT
We have seen already that this book could hardly be more opportune, coming as it does at the moment when two major reviews have been carried out on the primary school curriculum. Both of those reviews recommended handing back to teachers some of the professional decision-making, and both suggested that the straitjacket of the National Curriculum was due to have its traces loosened. The result is that the profession needs to revisit some old skills, some new skills, and some lost skills. That is the intention of this text as set out in the Foreword. But the book is more than just a text about a specific teaching approach: cross-curricular working. Embedded within it is an integrated approach to education, not just an integrated approach to curriculum content. The conceptual underpinning of the book consists of attitudes and philosophies; it is not a ‘tips for teachers’ volume providing a ‘painting by numbers’ formula with no basis in real skills or grounded theory.
