“Challenge in teaching is designing, and to be a good designer you have to think
about what you're trying to accomplish and craft a combination of the content
and the instructional methods, but also the assessment”
UBD Wiggins and McTighe
Grant Wiggins was the pioneer of authentic assessment. He stated "it's authentic in the sense [that] it's real. It's realistic. If you go into the work place, they don't give you a multiple-choice test to see if you're doing your job. They have some performance assessment. Emulates a more realistic means of critic in the "real" work atmosphere.
as they say in business." He wanted educators to focuses on the process of assessing.
When assessing project learning Wiggins believed that you need to have: standards, objectives, and criteria that
coexist with your goals. "When finished the student can make the case that they learned something substantial and significant that relates to school objectives."
Six facets of understanding", which include students being able to explain, interpret, apply, have perspective,
empathize, and have self-knowledge about a given topic that lead to deeper understanding.
Research Findings
Lauren Resnick -educational psychologist who examined science of learning and instruction and how they coexist People understand their reasoning through their engagement with objects and situations that make sense to them.
Researcher Lauren Resnick: What you assess is what you get; if you don't test it you won't get it. To improve student performance we must recognize that essential intellectual abilities are falling through the cracks of conventional testing.
Jan Herrington and Anthony Herrington how students respond to the model of authentic assessment
Susan Lajoie 1991 Authentic Conditions for Authentic Assessment
Authentic assessment is required to assess learning that students might actually carry out in the real world, as opposed to the kind of tasks traditionally learned in the classrooms.
Harry Torrance 2002 Evaluating Authentic Assessment
Assessment tasks should be more realistic, challenging than we might call “paper and
Pencil tests”.
Authentic Assessment and Pedagogical Strategies Gurnam Kaur Sidhu 2010
Research Conclusion:
“Assessing authentic performances should
become integral part of the instructional cycle. Feedback provided by the teacher AND students should
be informative in order to help the students assess their strengths and weaknesses, identifying areas for further growth.
Research findings criticisms of authentic assessment:
Wolf(1995) Linn , Baker , Dunbar(1991) look at the discrepancy between validity achieved at the expense of reliability showcasing students understanding of a certain topic.
8 main categories to consider: fairness, consequences, transfer, content coverage, cognitive complexity, meaningfulness, judgment, and efficiency.
Reeves and Okey (1996) do not allow for easy comparisons amongst students.
Counterpoint: students find things that other students create more meaningful because it reflects the audience. A student believes then in the capabilities of someone their own age, utilizing whatever resources they could. Students with then feel they are empowered themselves to create a product that says that the student matters (since it is shared for the use and benefit of others.)
Herrington Conclusion: constructivist approaches to teaching and learning are advancing with modern technologies, but approaches to assessment have failed to keep pace.
Why do you believe so?
Herrington Two major walls for obstruction of widespread authentic assessment…
Institutional and Pedagogical
Institutional policies and procedures set by schools to limit teacher in using various forms of assessment.
Pedagogical- discrepancy between task and assessment.