Assessment Ambivalence: Teachers’ perceptions of national history examinations in Scotland

Abstract

Scotland’s long tradition of high-stakes terminal examinations is coming under strain, as calls for diverse approaches to assessment increase in response to international criticism, and concerns about student wellbeing. This paper explores Scottish history teachers’ views on the existing examination structure and finds a contradictory picture. Teachers are sharply critical of a system which they see as rigidly performative and argue strongly that it is of dubious validity. Despite this, Scottish history teachers continue to defend the system in terms of its reliability and manageability. The paper proposes the concept of ‘assessment ambivalence’ to describe the cognitive coexistence of these paradoxical positions. The paper argues that teachers in Scotland are constrained by a lack of access to international research on historical understanding and assessment which leads them to accept an unsatisfactory status quo as a Leibnizian ‘best of all possible worlds.’ It concludes that access to these debates is a precondition for any improvements in the assessment regime.