The purpose of this study was to examine how experienced Year 12 history teachers in Western Australia managed the tension between content coverage and teaching for deeper understanding of the subject matter. To examine this question, four experienced history teachers in four high schools in Perth, Western Australia took part in the study. These teachers were observed teaching history in Year 12 during the 1994 school year and they were also interviewed on aspects of their teaching, the syllabus and the TEE examination. The students in these classrooms were also interviewed during the data collection period. The stories of these teachers are presented in four case studies. Evidence from this study indicates that the experienced Year 12 teachers have learned to make compromises in the way they teach and manage content coverage in such away that they are able to achieve high levels of examination performance while maintaining a focus on conceptual learning. The teachers managed this balancing act by(a) representing high examination performance and conceptual understanding of the subject matter as a single objective rather than as two objectives in opposition, (b)ensuring that students had a broad conceptual understanding of the key issues contained in the examination syllabus so that the students could independently construct answers to the kinds of questions contained in examinations and (c) selectively emphasising and teaching in depth some parts of the syllabus though the whole syllabus was covered at least superficially. Though the teachers would have preferred more personal control over the selection of content and assessment procedures, they nevertheless saw the external examination to have merit; however, as this study has demonstrated, the external examination is clearly a fallible means of student evaluation.