As if they could be otherwise...finding spaces for creativity in the enacted curriculum

This chapter inquires into four very different Australian middle-school classrooms where teachers are innovating their practices and developing new approaches to aspects of English curriculum. These classrooms from diverse settings (one middle-class urban, one elite private inner urban, one regional disadvantaged, one middle-class regional) have all taken imaginative leaps and reworked their curricula to put the students’ needs at the centre. At one school, Year 8 students design, make and play their own computer games, at another Year 6 students script, design, craft and shoot their own claymation film; at another, Year 9 students use videogames as texts in their literature studies; and at another, a group of Year 6 students work with a theatre company and their teachers to rework Shakespeare into a contemporary, accessible, enjoyable performance. The chapter considers how in each case these different approaches engage and extend the students in meaningful and relevant ways. The chapter includes a mix of teacher and student interview data, principal data and teacher writing. The chapter investigates how each of these projects worked to achieve its aims and discusses how the single national curriculum might be re-envisioned in local contexts.