This book is based on research focusing on "creative teaching" in the British National Curriculum. The aim has been to test and fill out the concept of creative teaching in a wider range of schools and with teachers working in markedly different circumstances than before the 1988 Education Reform Act, which established a National Curriculum in England. Study participants included 12 teachers from 5 primary schools in 1 local authority. The research has taken two directions. One concerns classroom teaching, and the ways in which primary teachers construct atmosphere, employ tone and mood to good effect, and establish common knowledge. The second direction has been about a concern that is prior to classroom teaching, but which is, none the less, closely bound up with it: how teachers create the conditions for their kind of teaching. The book is in seven chapters: (1) "Introduction: Adapting to Intensification"; (2) "Resisting through Collaboration: A Whole-school Perspective on the National Curriculum"; (3) "The Creative Use and Defence of Space: Appropriation through the Environment"; (4) "The Charisma of the Critical Other: Enhancing the Role of the Teacher"; (5) "Teaching, and Researching the Teaching of, a History Topic: An Experiment in Collaboration"; (6) "Managing Marginality: Aspects of the Career of a Primary School Head"; and (7) "Self-Determination among Primary School Teachers." (Contains 262 references.) (ND)