We discuss polyvalence as the organization of teachers' schoolwork, characterizing it as a constituent element of the polyvalent professionality of those who work in the early years of schooling. Based on two research experiments - a Brazilian and a French one - and on the legal aspects of the Portuguese experience, we discuss conceptions and practices that are being built in the experience of polyvalence. We identify elements of the polyvalent professionality: i) in a teacher-student relationship supported by a global pedagogy which fulfills students' needs and interests and encourages teachers' to see knowledge as a whole; ii) in the tension between the search for specialization and the defense of the training and performance of a single teacher in the different areas of knowledge; iii) in the association of polyvalence with the interdisciplinarity principle and; iv) in the ambivalence between official polyvalence and real polyvalence.
polyvalence; professionality; elementary school