Chalkface literally means a cliff or quarry exposing chalk, e.g. the White Cliffs of Dover.
To work "at the chalkface" means to work in education, specifically in a school. This term, believed to have originally been coined by Ted Wragg for his Times Educational Supplement column, should be seen as a metaphor for the coalface. At the time the term was coined, coal mining was still seen as the hardest, dirtiest, most dangerous job there was. The term appears to have resonated strongly with the teaching profession, as it quickly came into general use. In 1991, the BBC broadcast a television series called Chalkface, written by John Godber. in text books, this term appears on "becoming an effective teacher chapter one, -'the new chalkface training'-" written by Pual Stephens and Tim Crawley in 1994 which is currently used at teachers training classes.
The term has also been used to describe an experimental genre of music in which lyrics and music are improvised and never played twice.
