ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the attitudes and views of the teachers towards the National Curriculum using a specially designed attitude scale. Attitudes are learned and modified as the result of experience, often incidentally rather than systematically, and some are significantly related to an individual's personality, particularly her or his fundamental values and motives. The attitude scale was completed in writing by the teachers immediately prior to their interviews in 1989 and 1990 and as part of the written follow-up study carried out in 1991. The same middle range scores could reflect a consistently moderate or neutral attitude toward the National Curriculum, or, in contrast, an inconsistent attitude in which positive and negative views cancel each other out. On balance the evidence indicates that, as a group, the teachers in the sample became somewhat more negative in their attitudes to the National Curriculum, particularly with regard to the educational consequences of formal assessment.
