Imagination and the adolescent lifeworld: Possibilities and responsibilities in the national secondary review

The national secondary review promises new possibilities for innovation in curriculum design and the learner experience in Key Stage Three. With its emphasis on flexible curriculum frameworks and active pupil learning, this may create new avenues for the promotion of a frequently neglected area of the secondary pupil experience—the creative imagination. In the context of these developments, this paper reports the findings of a 12-month study conducted in six secondary schools in the West Midlands as part of a broader inquiry into pupil perceptions of imagination. Using descriptive phenomenological methodology, group discussions were conducted with Year 10 and 11 pupils in a range of secondary school settings. The findings reveal an elaborate and sophisticated account of imagination amongst pupils that does not readily align with the version of entrepreneurial creativity emerging in education policy in England. From the pupil perspective, opportunities for imaginative experience in the official curriculum were facilitated by, and restricted to, the subjects of History and those within the domain of the creative arts.