Assessment Theory and Practice of Students' Outcomes in the Nordic Countries

In the latest decades assessment in education has become a very controversial issue in many western countries, and especially so in the Nordic countries, where the controversy became most passionate in Norway. It was really not a debate about whether or not formal marks should be used in communication of educational outcomes for the individual student, as most people seem to believe, but a question of whether or not the assessment should be group- or goal-referenced. Strong critics of allocating formal marks after a Normal Curve-like model appeared, and in the 1970s and 1980s it was abandoned in most countries where it was used. The fight against the use of formal marking, which reached its peak in the late 1970s, did not result in any immediate major changes of existing practices in any of the Nordic countries, but the controversy has ever since been a latent conflict which has ignited the discussion again whenever new school reforms have been at issue. In the Nordic countries, and especially in Norway, the controversy about the use of formal marking can really be called the tail that wags the dog. The article presents an historical approach to the assessment problem area in Nordic education.