Mission

The Subject Specialism Research Group (SSRG) was established in January 2017, using seed-funding from the UCL Institute of Education. The SSRG has two key, mutually dependent aims:

• to conduct and promote research into subject-specialist teaching, across the areas of curriculum, pedagogy and assessment
• to investigate the leading role of knowledge within our schools

Our members’ research is currently focused in one or more of the following areas:

• the investigation of ‘recontextualisation’ issues that arise and the relations between school subjects and the disciplines
• the relationship between knowledge-led curriculum and appropriate pedagogies
• the realisation/enactment of progressive school curricula based on subject specialisms
• the design, creation and use of ‘textbooks’ within the resource ecologies of specialist subject teaching
• instructional and task design
• how we conceptualise ‘progress’ in different specialist domains
• the design, creation and use of assessment strategies in different specialist domains
• issues around teacher identity and teacher preparation in relation to subject specialism