Challenging genericism

In this chapter, we analyse the impact of forms of genericism that have taken hold in educational discourse, policy, and practice in England. Despite a recent policy climate ostensibly favourable to the knowledge agenda, we argue that the disciplinary quality of knowledge taught and teachers' relationship to that knowledge are now being eroded from within. Recontextualising work led by communities of subject teachers has been central to the emergence of enduring and deeply rooted knowledge traditions, with the collective agency of those subject communities driving the renewal of subject curricular practice. Using exemplification from the geography and history subject communities in England, we address these issues through the following interconnected questions (i) Why is curricular attention to a subject's forms of accounting essential for successful teaching of knowledge? (ii) What is the significance of the intrinsically social and relational character of subject knowledge for the interplay of curriculum and teacher development? (iii) What structures and processes at system level might sustain rather than weaken teachers' attention to subject-specificity?