Reconfiguring History Teachers’ Assessment Practices in the Context of ChatGPT: Charting the New Terrain

Abstract Despite extensive research on the concerns with the use of ChatGPT that evolve around cheating, academic integrity, and plagiarism, very little is known on the assessment practices in school history, obscuring our understanding on how history teachers can assess students amid ChatGPT driven challenges. This conceptual paper discusses the challenges of ChatGPT in assessing history students and how history teachers’ assessment practices can be reconfigured to address the ChatGPT-driven challenges. Employing documents and extant literature from the public domain, the paper grounded in Christensen’s theory of disruptive behaviour responded to two questions that underpin the study: what are the challenges of using ChatGPT to assess history students, and how can history teachers reconfigure their assessment practices to address these challenges? Findings shows that while ChatGPT can help students generate and outsource answers for their written assignments, there are clear advantages to its use, which history teachers must consider as they reimagine and reconceptualise how to evade the destructive roles of ChatGPT in assessment practices. The study recommends that educational institutions explore the potential and difficulties associated with ChatGPT in specific subject areas and develop suitable implementation techniques to contribute to a more fair and effective learning environment for students.