ABSTRACT
Over the last decade in Britain and in the United States, as noted by McNamara (1991), policy-makers have been promoting teachers' knowledge of subjects and the application of this subject knowledge in the classroom as a key element in the raising of standards in teaching. As policy-makers have sought to increase the effectiveness of subject teaching through educational reform, conceptual and empirical enquiry has contributed to a changing and developing research base concerning teachers' subject knowledge. Although in the early stages of development, new lines of enquiry are generating fresh debate about the nature and substance of teachers' knowledge and the way this knowledge is transformed in classroom teaching. It was this emergent field of enquiry which provided the impetus for the project which forms the basis for this book. In spite of the concern of policy-makers, however, it is too soon to make general statements about what teachers do know or should know about subject content and about its translation into forms accessible to young children. It is still difficult, at this point in time, to characterize or synthesize these new conceptual constructs and research findings, to indicate their scope or to anticipate future trends and developments.
