Introduction

Of all Canadian provinces, Quebec is the only one that imposes on students a mandatory examination in the field of history. Completed in their 10th year of mandatory education, students must get a passing grade to obtain their High School diploma.Footnote 1 Yet, a study of the success rate pre-Covid shows a high level of failure (around 30%), which is a cause of stress for both students and teachers alike (Blouin, 2020; Pageau 2023; Présumé & Brunet, 2022). During the last two years, because of the world-wide pandemic, schools have been given a short respite from the provincial examination as learning and teaching conditions were deeply affected by sporadic school closures and a shift to online learning. Without this sword of Damocles over their heads, teachers started to design their own assessments. Among them, a group from the Fédération des Établissements d’Éducation Privée (FEEP) of Quebec led by Benjamin Lille, a pedagogical councilor, decided to build a new model of assessment, one that would better reflect the demands of the history curriculum. Our research team was tasked to assist this group and document the process of creation, so that we might better understand how teachers navigate the complex act of assessing students’ knowledge. To our surprise, the discussion around assessment soon turned toward questions of epistemology, as teachers realized that their understanding of the discipline differed from that of their colleagues. It was only when teachers, after much debate, had reached a common, and more nuanced, understanding of what educational history is, that the assessment model was created. This paper aims to discuss how the relationship between assessment and epistemology might prove an interesting path to enable teachers’ reflections on their personal understanding of the discipline. To do so, we will first offer a description of Quebec teachers’ epistemological beliefs as portrayed in research, as well as the influence of these beliefs on their assessment practices. It is through this analysis will we explain what is, in our eyes, the epistemology of history. Following a brief description of the research methodology, we will illustrate how our research brings a new perspective in the study of epistemological understandings in the field of history education. This will lead us to a discussion of how assessment forced our participants to reposition themselves in relation to their understandings of the nature of history, and how this affected their teaching. Implications of this realization for future research will then be highlighted. Finally, questions on the possibility of epistemic layers in history education will be explored.

Teachers’ Epistemological Understanding and Its Relationship to Assessment

History as a scientific discipline can be approached through different approaches: positivist, postmodern, hermeneutic are but a few perspectives found in the literature (Gadamer, 1969; Maza, 2017). Ministries borrow from these different approaches to build curriculums, while teachers develop their epistemological understanding of the discipline through training and experience. Their sources of information being different, curriculum authors and teachers do not always see eye to eye when it comes to what history should be, what its function is, and what should be expected of students (Gignac, 2022). The imposition of a competency-based curriculum in 2006 in the province of Quebec is a good example of this tension, as many teachers rejected the curriculum because it clashed too violently with their epistemological understanding of History (Demers, 2011; Moisan, 2010). The new curriculum favored the teaching of an interpretative past using inquiry-based pedagogy through the construction of three (now two) competencies (MEQ, 2006). Teachers were portrayed as guides to help students in their construction, deconstruction, and reconstruction of plausible narratives (Duquette, 2011). However, research on teachers’ social representations of history has shown that most teachers at the time relied on a more positivist understanding of the discipline, and viewed their role as storytellers helping students learn a more traditional narrative that was necessary for the construction of students’ identities (Demers, 2011; Moisan, 2010). Left to themselves with little to no help from the Ministry of Education,Footnote 2 many teachers went back to a more traditional model of teaching history focused on the memorization of facts, thus forsaking the aims of the new curriculum (Gignac, 2022). Teachers felt supported in this choice by the requirements of the provincial mandatory examination, which put, and still puts, much emphasis on the memorization of content knowledge (Déry, 2017; Duquette et al., 2020). Assessment therefore acted as a justification for rejecting the pedagogical demands of the new curriculum. This event portrayed the stability of history teachers’ epistemological beliefs (Demers, 2011), demonstrating the difficulties they experienced in shifting from a positivist approach to a more critical mindset (Maggioni et al., 2009).

It is only recently, almost twenty years later, that we are starting to observe a slow change in teachers’ epistemological understanding, that demonstrates an openness towards the teaching of a more hands-on history (Lanoix & Moisan, 2022). In this way, assessment methodologies are starting to be questioned. Other studies focusing on the experiences of student teachers (Boutonnet, 2019; Brunet & Demers, 2018) show that during their initial training preservice teachers are open to the importance of critical thinking skills, and to revising narratives to include more diverse voices and perspectives. These approaches often concord, to some degree, with their preliminary epistemological beliefs. However, their practicum experiences often lead to perceived profound contradictions between what they learn in their university courses and the constraints and demands of classroom realities. Moreover, they are confronted with in-service teachers’ epistemic beliefs that differ from their own (Demers, 2011). As one of the student teachers from Boutonnet’s (2019) study points out: “In practice, it’s just that the environment swallows you up and forces you to teach the ministry program in a very industrial way. So you end up […] with not enough experience or energy to manage [critical thinking competencies]” (our translation, p. 92). This situation is notably correlated by Boutonnet’s research participants, with the constraints of evaluation. Assessment is viewed as a hurdle to innovation, instead of as a justification for keeping to a more transmissive style of teaching history. Whatever its role, assessment appears to be tightly bound to epistemology in the act of teaching.

In a two-year project, Monney et al. (2021) found that depending on the level taught, teachers did not enter the act of teaching through the same “door”. High school teachers (in Quebec, students enter what is called école secondaire, in secondaire 1, or grade 7, when they are 12 years old) seemed to “enter” the act of teaching through their understanding of the discipline, while elementary school teachers entered through their understanding of pedagogy, most notably through planning (Monney et al., 2021). Figure 9.1 illustrates the different “doors” through which teachers entered the act of teaching.

Fig. 9.1
An illustration of the act of teaching. It has 3 elements in a clockwise cycle. 1. Planning, through which elementary school teachers enter the act of teaching. 2. Discipline of history, through which high school teachers enter the act of teaching. 3. Assessment.

Simplified version of Monney et al.’s (2021) model representing the act of teaching

Full size image

Thus, according to this model, entering through their understanding of the discipline, high school teachers’ epistemological choices affect both their planning and assessment. For example, if a teacher understands history as a specific narrative to be memorized to create social cohesion, the same teacher will probably plan their teaching around the acquisition of said narrative, and their assessment will be aimed at observing whether or not students have memorized it. However, no research to our knowledge has verified if the opposite is true, if entering the act of teaching through a reflection on assessment might impact one’s epistemological understanding. When Benjamin Lille and a team of six high school teachers reached us asking for assistance in the elaboration of a competency-based assessment model, we felt it was the perfect situation to observe whether entering Monney et al.’s (2021) model through the door of assessment could influence, in return, one’s epistemological understanding of the discipline. Would teachers’ notions of history be transformed following their work on assessment? Would, on the other hand, their epistemological understanding be so stable as to block any innovation in the assessment tool they wished to create? It is with these questions in mind that our team undertook this project.

Methodology

Based on a collaborative research methodology (Desgagné, 1997), this project started in the fall of 2021 and was composed of six working meetings. Collaborative research seemed to be the most suited approach for our needs as it is: “a mediation between two knowledge cultures that need to be reconciled, i.e., the culture of ‘knowledge of action’ and the culture of ‘scholarly knowledge’” (Desgagné et al., 2001, p. 37, our translation). Thus, our team composed of six Quebec Secondary III (Grade 9) teachers (here known as teacher-researchers), a pedagogical advisor, two researchers, and a research assistant, completed seven working meetings during the 2021–2022 school year. Over the course of the project, the creation of an overarching assessment model and three distinct examinations were completed and tested in the teacher-researchers’ classrooms. Data was collected during meetings, which we, for research purposes, called focus groups. Each focus group was then analyzed using the qualitative data analysis software Nvivo. We also coded students’ graded papers (n = 44) with the aim of distinguishing the characteristics of the students’ responses based on the grades assigned to them.

It should be noted that the assessment model created by the teacher-researchers was inquiry-based and relied on students’ ability to use historical sources to support their opinions (Gibson & Miles, 2020). More specifically, students had to answer a historical prompt such as “Jacques Cartier’s voyages: success or failure?” by presenting an argument in the form of a text supporting their opinion. To solidify their arguments and include relevant elements in their answer, students had access to a documentary file containing historical and contemporary sources (n = 10). Answers were kept short at around 200 words. Teacher-researchers used a four criteria grid to assess the exam, with the criteria being: (1) quality and proper use of historical thinking concepts, (2) quality of facts selected, (3) proper utilization of historical sources, and (4) coherence in the general argument.

Much discussion was needed during the focus groups before teacher-researchers were able to draft their assessment model. Of all six focus groups, the second and third meetings were the moments where we were best able to observe how assessment practices confronted teachers’ epistemological understandings of history. What are the aims of educational history? What do we want to achieve with our students? What’s important? All these questions had to be answered before any significant work could be done on the assessment model.

Teachers’ Common Understandings of Assessment

When building the assessment task, teacher-researchers had several conversations on its structure and its aim. One key topic was transposing the complex nature of historical thinking competencies in the form of an examination. In this case, the competencies were drawn from the current history curriculum which asks students to: (1) characterize a period in the history of Québec and Canada, (2) interpret a social phenomenon (Ministère de l’éducation et de l’enseignement supérieur, 2017). None of the teachers objected to the idea of integrating competencies in their assessment model. The key question was how to observe the evolution of students’ historical thinking skills (Seixas & Morton, 2013), seen here as key components of the competencies, during a set period. Teacher-researchers first turned toward what was done in the earlier grades for an answer. As many elementary schools use competency-based rubrics in their assessments, doing the same at the high school level appeared to be a natural continuation. Teacher-researchers felt that such rubrics would potentially reduce the negative impacts of assigning a grade out of a hundred, or a pass or fail grade. The rubrics would need to target criteria which allowed both students and teachers to observe improvement over time. In this way, the goal of the assessment was to show progress in the competency, rather than demonstrating the memorization of declarative knowledge. Because they focused on progression over time, assessments could share the same structure and thus be more holistic in nature. This idea brought teacher-researchers to reflect on an assessment model that could evolve and, above all, be transferred from one year to the next so that students’ progress could be observed throughout their studies. To do so, they turned their attention to the structure of the examination.

The structure of the examination was widely discussed by the teacher-researchers. Among the many proposals put forward, an inquiry-based structure finally gained approval. This type of task where the students had “to argue” was seen to increase the level of commitment and involvement in class. This opinion was later confirmed after the first prototype was completed by the teacher-researchers’ own students. They noticed that students felt more in control and, as one of the teacher-researchers said: “Students received the task very, very well, they even felt really involved since the answers came from them and they were the ones who had to choose and explain it” (Teacher-Research (T-R) 4, Focus Group (FG) 2). Furthermore, the inquiry-based structure of the assessment allowed the teacher-researchers to observe how students made sense of the past, giving them the chance to rectify afterwards any incomprehension or incoherence. In fact, teacher-researchers seemed to recognize that an inquiry-based task allowed for the development of all the historical thinking skills, with an emphasis on historical significance (Seixas & Morton, 2013). As one teacher-researcher noted: “It really brought them [the students] into this kind of process where they have to select and argue ideas that they feel are really the most important” (T-R 3, F-G 2). This impacted teacher-researchers planning strategies as they felt it was necessary to give students sufficient practice before conducting the examination, so that students would feel comfortable with the aims and structure of the assessment.

With the overarching structure decided, it was now time to create specific evaluative tasks. Teacher-researchers recognized that the inquiry-based assessment structure allowed them to propose tasks of varying complexity, and that the challenge was to gauge the correct level of difficulty for their students. This was made more complex by their desire to integrate the ethical dimension of historical thinking (Seixas & Morton, 2013) so that students could be brought to answer questions such as: “Why does this population live this way instead of that way? What does the territory offer to the population today compared to yesterday?” (T-R 2, F-G 2). Students could therefore propose ethical judgments about past events by considering their historical context, and reflecting on today’s society’s historical responsibility. Teacher-researchers reaffirmed their need to establish some continuity between proposed tasks, i.e., offering the same set of historical sources for two different examinations. This would allow students to potentially measure the consequences of longer-term events. Competencies were viewed in a broader perspective as teacher-researchers wished for students to discover and develop them “by using a variety of work methods that are not just related to history” (T-R 1, F-G 2). We thus observed a shift from the centrality of declarative facts, to an emphasis on historical methodologies and critical thinking skills. It is because of their agreement on the importance of the historical method over the memorization of declarative knowledge, that most teachers agreed to forego a recapitulative examination at the end of the year that would go back over all the content seen during the year. Reasons for this, according to the participants, were that such a mandatory examination risked “putting a lot of pressure on the child”. (T-R 2, F-G 2) and that “a recap of the whole year’s [declarative knowledge], it doesn’t make sense” (T-R 5, F-G 2). Although less central, declarative knowledges still had to be considered within the tasks, as the latter still had to align with the demands of the curriculum. This brought teacher-researchers to look for moments in the curriculum where the topic studied could give rise to potential inquiry questions. A set of questions were then drafted, and teacher-researchers assessed their difficulty through the lens of their professional experience. In this way, teachers adapted the curriculum to their evaluative needs.

Having decided on a structure and a set of tasks, teacher-researchers finally turned their attention toward the assessment grid. They wished to create something that would allow them to “determine the level of competency [each student] had reached” (T-R 1, F-G 2). One of them proposed the creation of a global grid that could be presented at the beginning of high school and where one or more criteria could be worked on gradually throughout the years. Competency-based assessment would therefore become familiar to students as: “He or she would be able to say to himself or herself ‘in history, we do it always in the same way’” (T-R 6, F-G 2). Yet, it was clear for the teacher-researchers that this grid had not yet been created, a task which they decided to attempt. Because the same grid would be used throughout high school, the importance of factual knowledge had to be very limited as course content changes each year (ex: year 7 or secondaire 1 focuses on Antiquity until the Middle Ages, and year 8 or secondaire 2 on the Renaissance until present times). The grid also needed to turn students away from memorization, and instead value the historical method as a form of transversal learning. It was by reflecting on the characteristics of what makes a “good” historical argument, that teachers came up with four criteria to assess students, one associated with the validity of the historical information and three others concerned with historical thinking skills: use of evidence, establishing causality, and explaining significance. Again, the willingness of the teacher-researchers to favor procedural knowledges to better grasp the aims and intention of the competencies was a key element in the creation of the assessment protocol.

Epistemological Understanding of the Discipline

Throughout the project, teacher-researchers’ epistemological conceptions of the discipline were made manifest during the numerous conversations recorded. At first, a general sense of surprise could be perceived when participants realized that they didn’t all share the same understanding of the discipline and its teaching. Little by little, and through the work surrounding the assessment model, teacher-researchers came to agree on a common understanding of how one should teach history and what narratives should be taught.

Epistemology and Pedagogy

Working on the assessment protocol brought teacher-researchers to reevaluate their understanding of how the discipline is taught. As assessment and teaching must be in coherence with one another, teacher-researchers naturally reviewed their pedagogical practices and their overall role in their students’ education, so that they matched with the objectives of their new assessment model. This work brought them to reconsider their role as teachers. Overall, they felt that history teachers should guide students in their path to knowledge by providing engaging activities aimed at developing students’ historical thinking skills. They also agreed that they had the responsibility to give students the tools to become independent and critical citizens. Engaging with the discipline of history was understood as an interpretive process that requires students to make connections between what they know and what they are learning. All assessments should reflect this goal. The language of history was also important as one of the teacher-researcher mentioned that choosing the right words would: “guide the use they [the students] will make of the historical sources afterwards” (T-R 2, F-G 3). Even if students were seen as more active in their learning, the teacher-researchers wanted to remain in control of what happened in their classroom. Thus, the assessment tool created had to provide them with information on students’ ability to use historical thinking skills in the framework prescribed by the curriculum. Students’ epistemological understanding of the discipline was, however, of little concern to the participants as it is not included in the said curriculum. Still, using Maggioni’s model (2022), it is possible to note a change in our participants from a more positivist approach to an emerging critical stance as they move away from a teacher-centric teaching of history to a more student-focused and interpretative pedagogy.

Yet, this move is not perceived by the teacher-researchers as something that is easy to achieve or even encouraged by their peers. On the contrary, they used an “us versus them” (us being the study participants and them being colleagues not participating in the research) approach when discussing their view on the discipline and its teaching. They recognized themselves as a “special” group brought together by their shared desire to witness the modernization of history education. Colleagues were seen as resistant to this change, unwilling to embrace a new method of teaching history. This resistance was also described as the fuel for passive-aggressive interactions where the teacher-researchers were singled out for wanting to do things differently.

Another element that made changing approaches a difficult process was, for the participants, the potential rejection of the assessment model by their students and to some extent by the students’ parents. When proposing their new type of assessment in class, teacher-researchers felt that for some learners moving away from memorization was a difficult process to accept. It caused, at first, much turmoil in class: “Students also put pressure on us. If I don’t present a study plan with information to be learned by heart, well, that’s the end of the world. They’re not used to it” (T-R 4, F-G 2). In this way, students felt lost, as the path to success had changed. Teacher-researchers explained that the principal and the students’ parents were also concerned by the change, not so much because it fostered a different understanding of history but mostly because it might have an impact on students’ grades. Teacher-researchers agreed that students and parents were easier to calm once the novelty wore off and students demonstrated a continued ability to get good marks. Yet we do not know if this acceptation was a sign of a profound change in students’ understanding of the nature of history, or just their acceptance of a different assessment structure.

Epistemology and Narrative

If working on their assessment model brought teachers-researchers to question and change their pedagogical approach to history education, it didn’t bring them to reconsider the narrative that was being taught. Teacher-researchers showed a preference for a rather traditional understanding of the national narrative to be shared with students. In Grade 9, the curriculum proposes to study Quebec and Canada before colonization, then to focus on the period of New France and finally the English colonization period up to 1840. Pre-colonization Indigenous history was seen as the least inspiring period by some teacher researchers. The theme would be, for them, more engaging if Europeans settlers were included because it allows the addition of multiple perspectives (T-R 3, F-G 3). Generally, teachers find that focusing on politics and economic aspects of a society makes for a more interesting class than social topics. Social and cultural questions are thought to be too simplistic for high school students. This interpretation of what constitutes meaningful topics and less interesting topics is surprising to us as it seems it clashes with the fact that the same teacher-researchers were seeing themselves as “progressive” in their comprehension of teaching history by proposing a more active and student-centric pedagogy. However, they seemed reluctant to question how their own identities influenced their decisions on why certain topics are seen as relevant while others are considered irrelevant. This tendency has also been identified in other studies. Scott and Gani (2018) have highlighted how teachers consistently discharged themselves from the responsibility of teaching Indigenous histories and harbored Euro-centric biases. Other studies (Barton, 2012; Levstik & Groth, 2002) show that teachers and students alike tend to see social history or history of marginalized groups (e.g. women, Indigenous peoples, Black Canadians) as deviating from what constitutes “real” history in their eyes (more than often political, androcentric, settler-colonial narratives of history). In terms of epistemology, these representations of what is significant and non-significant in the eyes of teachers might play a role not only in how they chose to build their assessment, but also in possible biases incorporated in every step of the evaluation process. As the question of narratives was not central to our initial questioning, and with our willingness to keep the group interested and motivated in the collaborative task, this was not addressed directly with teacher-researchers during the focus groups.

This reflection on the place of narrative should by no mean be seen as a critic of the work of the teachers-researchers, but more of an occasion to appreciate the complexity and effort associated to the process of moving from one epistemic positioning to another. It shows that such a move does not only involve taking an intellectual stance, but also making important modifications in both pedagogical practices and content knowledge choices that may or may not be welcomed by peers. Moreover, this study seems to point out this move is not linear or all encompassing. In this case, change in teacher-researchers is perceived at the pedagogical level but not when it comes to the choice of narrative. Thus, a single teacher could be considered as having a critical stance when it comes to their pedagogy, while taking a more traditional approach when it comes to the content taught. The coexistence of multiple positionings within a single individual might be a factor explaining why moving from a positivist approach to a critical one proves to be difficult. Moreover, exterior factors such as peer pressure or parents’ expectation also play a role in promoting or restricting epistemic growth. This conclusion leads us to wondering how, in such a context, one can foster a deeper understanding of the discipline in teachers? The field of assessment might be a path worth exploring.

Assessment as the Road to Move Away from Traditional Teaching of History

Although this text, for the purpose of clarity, portrays the work of the teachers as a coherent and flawless process, it was, in truth, a chaotic experience full of back-and-forth. Leadership of the pedagogical consultant was the key to the success of the enterprise as he avoided tangents and gave time to “empty” a topic of discussion before moving on. Teacher-researchers were pleased by the final product as they felt the assessment model better reflected their epistemic positioning. In this way, this study suggests that the analysis of assessment practices is a conducive environment for observing and influencing one’s understanding of history. Because assessment serves as a tool to verify learning, the nature of the learning itself must be clear. Because not everything seen in class can be assessed, working on assessment models forces teachers to identify what is essential and what is secondary. Because there must be coherence between assessment and teaching, building assessment models influences how content is delivered in the classroom. Entering the act of teaching (Monney et al., 2021) through the door of assessment provides a natural space for reflection on epistemic considerations.

Although promising, the interaction between assessment and epistemology did not bring teacher-researchers to reflect on the content of the narrative, as they still favored a more traditional story that supports a political approach to history (Barton, 2012; Levstik & Groth, 2002). Still, their teaching of the discipline was significantly changed as they moved away from a focus on content knowledge to a teaching of historical thinking skills (Seixas & Morton, 2013) or in other words, toward a teaching of procedural knowledge. This situation was surprising as we originally thought that by moving from declarative knowledge to procedural knowledge, teachers would have naturally come to reconsider the nature of the narrative taught. Yet, this aspect of their epistemic positioning was left unchanged. Reflecting on this, we feel that one’s epistemic understanding of history might be better expressed in the form of layers where change in one layer does not necessarily impact the others. Three layers could come into play: (1) the intention layer associated with the role of educational history in students’ education, (2) the narrative layer associated with the choice of the narrative layer associated with the choice of representations included in the narratives promoted in class, and (3) the methodological layer associated with how history is constructed. These layers, in turn, could be used to observe the movement from a teachers’ understanding of history as a science, to its adaptation into a school subject. While assessment, as a context that fosters movement between layers, could be used to obtain a better understanding of criteria necessary to create epistemological wobbling (Maggioni, 2022). In other words, assessment as a research context can go far beyond the scoring grid.