Huntsley, Jennifer ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5613-5703 and Jach, Stephanie (2026) Developing subject specific pedagogies for the primary foundation subjects in university-based ITE. In: BERA TEAN Conference 2026, 20th-21st May 2026, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

Developing subject specific pedagogies for the primary foundation subjects has become an urgent priority in the wake of the 2025 Curriculum Review, which calls for higher levels of disciplinary expertise across the curriculum (DfE 2025). However, foundation subjects have historically been marginalised in both schools and Initial Teacher Education (ITE). Ofsted responded to concerns around narrowing of the curriculum and subject marginalization by changing the ways in which schools are inspected. They argue that these changes have led to broader and more ambitious curricula, with improved sequencing across the foundation subjects (Ofsted, 2025). Despite this, it remains unclear how these developments have translated into ITE, and how student teachers are being prepared to enact subject specific pedagogies across the full primary curriculum.

Research on learning to teach the foundation subjects in university-based ITE remains limited and tends to be confined to individual disciplines thereby overlooking the holistic demands placed on primary generalists who must develop extensive expertise across a wide range of subjects (Davis & Boerst, 2014). Crucially, the nature and constraints of each subject’s knowledge domain shape the pedagogical approaches required to support effective disciplinary learning (Paniagua & Istance, 2018). The 2025 Curriculum Review underscores this point by emphasising that subject teaching involves not only conveying content but also supporting pupils to think with and through disciplinary knowledge. Consequently, primary student teachers must develop both robust subject knowledge and the pedagogical knowledge specific to each foundation subject.

This presentation examines how subject specific pedagogies can be meaningfully developed within university-based ITE across a range of primary foundation subjects. We employed generative critical conversations (Huntsley & Brentnall, 2020) as a method to interrogate and articulate our pedagogical practices and the rationales that underpin them. The findings identify shared principles informing the teaching of subject specific pedagogies in primary history, geography, art, and design and technology. Participants will be invited to consider the implications of these findings for their own practice in preparing student teachers to teach the primary foundation subjects.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Status:	Unpublished
Subjects:	L Education > L Education (General)
School/Department:	School of Education, Language and Psychology
URI:	https://ray.yorksj.ac.uk/id/eprint/15052

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