"What do English teachers understand by the word 'creativity'? How does their understanding of creativity differ from the meanings that others ascribe to this word? What forms does creativity take in their classrooms? Prompted by Raymond Williams's statement that creativity involves stepping from the 'known into the 'unknown', the contributors to this volume inquire into how their students explore the 'unknown' in a policy environment where everything is mapped out in advance by predetermined learning 'outcomes'. They see their classrooms as spaces for students to engage in imagination, play and learning that exceed the conventional expectations of standardised learning continua. However, rather than supposing that it is possible to transcend those settings, as in old-fashioned notions of creativity or giftedness, the authors carefully trace the ways in which moments of creativity still occur within the heavily regulated environments imposed on them by governments. Creativity, they argue, should be understood as a product of the institutional setting of the school, as something that is facilitated by the social relationships of the classroom, rather than falling back on to assumed binaries of school as a place of regulation and control and creativity as something that can only happen outside the school gates. History has a privileged place in these essays, which draw on work from a number of key theorists in the history of English curriculum and related areas of the social science, including the work of Raymond Williams." --backcover.