ABSTRACT
Over the last ten years, the primary community has had to re-examine some of its basic assumptions and practices-an exercise for which it has not received the credit it deserves. One such tradition is the generalist role of the class teacher. Twenty years ago, one of the major planks of primary teachers’ claim to professionalism lay in their supposed ability, single-handedly and without any help from other colleagues, to teach the whole of the curriculum to their classes throughout the school year. However, with the advent of the National Curriculum, that claim became untenable. Teachers, some reluctantly, began to acknowledge that it was virtually impossible to teach unaided the full range of the National Curriculum (Key Stages 1 and 2) and religious education, particularly but not only towards the end of Key Stage 2. The notion of primary teachers’ subject expertise and how it might be supported to transact the full range of curriculum requirements had to be revised. The publication of Curriculum Organisation and Classroom Practice in Primary Schools (see Chapter 13) contributed to that review. This chapter written in 1993 distinguishes between different forms of subject expertise, and outlines different ways in which that expertise might be deployed to support and complement (not replace) the generalist role of the class teacher. It has been revised to take account of recent developments.
