Book: Authentic Assessment

Valerie J Janesick ISBN 082047648

pg 4

What is Authentic Assessment

1. It is realistic. The assessment task should follow closely the ways in which a person’s abilities are “tested” in the real world.
2. It requires judgment and innovation. Here the student must use knowledge and skills to solve problems.
3. It asks the student to do the subject.
4. It replicates or stimulates actual “tests” in the workplace, personal life, and civic life.
5. It assesses the student’s ability and skills to effectively and efficiently use a repertoire of many skills to complete a problem or task. In terms of accessing more than verbal or mathematical skills, authentic assessment relies on all the many intelligences a person can develop.
6. It allows many opportunities to practice, rehearse, consult, get feedback, and refine actual performances and productions. It other words, students must learn something and get better at doing the task at hand.

Pg 5

Characteristics of Typical Tests and Authentic Tasks

Typical Test	Authentic Task
Requires correct answer	Requires quality performance or product
Is disconnected from the student’s environment	Is connected to the student’s world
Is simplified	Is complex and multilayered
Is one-shot	Is continuing with multiple tasks
Provides one score	Provides complex feedback continually recurring; as the student self-adjusts, performance is improved
Looks for one level of thinking	Looks for higher-order skills with a demonstration of knowledge

Pg 8

The History of Assessment

[John] Dewey {1859-1952] was a philosopher of education who early on recognized the importance of what we now call “authentic assessment”.

pg 9

Of his voluminous writings, these texts in particular relate to authentic assessment:

1. My Pedagogic Creed (1987)
2. The School and Society (1899)
3. The Child and the Curriculum (1902)
4. How We Think (1910)
5. Art as Experience (1934)
6. Experience and Education (1938)

Dewey was the first to argue for what would later be a major shift from control of subject matter by the teacher, to control of learning by the student.

In education, his most enduring legacy in terms of assessment includes his focus on:

1. Experience as a key element in the educative process;
2. Child-centered activities for learning in the early years;
3. Democracy and education;
4. the significance of art as experience and a key component of education;
5. Awareness of the importance of the public school as a key element of education the citizenry for a healthy democracy;
6. Pragmatism or the balance between theory and practice;
7. Progressivism, or the moment to ensure experience-based education, a move away from technocratic approaches to curriculum, toward dealing with the whole child. … the idea of social justice emerges early in the history of education, although this fact is regularly overlooked.
8. The school must be a community … the school provided a sense of connectedness and community at the time he was writing about these ideas.
9. Ethical treatment of students and teachers. Dewey firmly believed that trickery should not be used in education.

pg 14

Performance-based assessment – this term is often used interchangeable with authentic assessment. It is assessment based on performance tasks designed to show what a student can do, such as asking a movie, performing a dance, writing an essay, constructing art work, preparing demonstrations, sharing journal writing, or conducting an interview.

Authentic assessment provides educators with a space to truly address what students know and how student knowledge can be applied in an actually performance-based assessment.

…authentic assessment goes beyond what a student knows to what a student can do.

pg 15

Whatever learning they measure, authentic assessment must be meaningful to the student.

pg 16

Postmodernism

Postmodernism is a theoretical framework and a form of critique that questions the following assumptions:

1. the primary and legitimacy of Western reason and its social political, economic, and educational effects without an understand of how these values affect other nations;
2. obligatory Western heroes who presuppose a privilege for these heroes, often resulting in some form of unethical behavior self-justified by this privilege, which in turn reinforces a double standard that the West can critique others but cannot itself be a genuine target of criticism

pg 29

Some Examples of Authentic Assessment

1. Performances;
2. Demonstrations;
3. Simulations;
4. Oral presentations;
5. Progress interviews;
6. Writing samples;
7. Formal observations;
8. Self-assessment;
9. Evaluations of case studies;
10. Recordings on audio or video tape of readings or performances;
11. Journal writing;
12. Writing folders chronicling a student’s development through a course of study;
13. Role plays;
14. Portfolios

Portfolio assessment is widely used to review the progress of a student’s work over time. The student selects which artifacts go into the portfolio. … Most often there is some standard, or learning objective, which guides the student’s selections for the portfolio.

pg 30

it is meant to be an active process. it is not a one-shot procedure but a work in progress. The portfolio is constantly changing and continually updated.

Rubric – a set of scoring guidelines for evaluating students’ work. Rubrics provide criteria for judgement of performance. Usually there is a scale or range of possible points assigned to a rubric. Each level of performance on the rubric must have specific descriptors that indicate what a student can do. Rubrics are often associated with standards and how those standards are met as well as authentic assessment measures. For example, if a student constructs a portfolio, the portfolio will be evaluated in terms of a rubric of some sort.

Writing Rubric A: Evaluation of a Writing Rubric

Comprehensiveness and Accuracy

5) The topic is addressed creatively, thoroughly, and accurately. All pertinent information about the topic is included.

4) The topic is addressed thoroughly and accurately. All pertinent information is included.

3) The topic is addressed, but some minor information is omitted. All information is accurate.

2) The topic is addressed superficially. Important information is omitted or inaccurate.

1) The topic is addressed superficially, and so much information is inaccurate or omitted that the paper is misleading about the topic.

Conventions of Grammar and Writing

5) The organization of the paper enhances the reader’s understanding of the topic, and there are no errors in grammar, punctuation, or spelling.

4) the organization of the paper is appropriate for the topic, and there are no errors in grammar, punctuation or spelling.

3) the organization of the paper is appropriate for the topics, and there are only a few minor errors in grammar, punctuation, or spelling.

2) the organization of the paper is unclear, or there are several errors in grammar, punctuation, or spelling.

1)the organization of the paper interfers with the reader’s understanding, and/or there are major errors in grammar, punctuation, and/or spelling.

Use of Sources

5 More than five sources are cited correctly in the paper and included in the reference list

4 At least five sources are cited correctly and included in the reference list

3 At least four sources are cited correctly and included in the reference list.

2 At least four sources are cited and included in the reference list, but their form is incorrect.

1 Fewer than four sources are cited or referenced.

Use of Appropriate Topical Examples

5 Examples appropriate to this topic are used creatively and appropriately and are explained so that the meaning of the paper is enhanced.

4 Examples are used appropriately and are explained so that they add to the meaning of the paper.

3 Examples are used, but they do no add to the meaning of the paper.

2 Examples are used but not explained

1 Examples are used inappropriately or none are included.

pg 32

The value of the rubric is that the student sees how evaluation will take place and is actually part of the evaluation insofar at the student internalizes the criteria for assessment. There are no secretes in terms of what is expected of the student… Authentic tasks and authentic assessment provide an ethical approach to accountability.

Pg 45

Learning from the Research and writing on Assessment

In attempting to define and describe authentic assessment, all previous knowledge of typical, standardized, large-scale testing needs to be put aside. To phrase it simply, typical, standardized, large-scale tests do not prepare students for the real world. They do not prepare students for what to do with knowledge. Assessment, on the other hand, is about doing. Students create a product or perform an act. They must enact their knowledge. Would we judge a lawyer merely on their knowledge of tort class, or would we also judge her on her performance in a real courtroom? Would we judge the ballet dancer on floor exercises only in class or also on live performances of the ballet “Swan Lake” to test knowledge of ballet? In other words, we need to assess the student’s knowledge of how to actually prepare for the various roles and opportunities that are encountered in the real world of work, study, and play. Knowledge is not all clean cut and easily catalogued.

pg 46

The research and writing on assessment clearly indicates that there is a tension between authentic assessment and one-shot, large-scale testing. On the one hand, authentic assessment tasks are designed to find out what the students know and what they can actually do with their knowledge. On the other hand, the generic testing approach requires a student to memorize facts, out of contents of the elarning siltation, and does not require a check on what a student can do.

pg 47

Contrasting Approaches to Testing

Typical Geography Test	Authentic Assessment
1. Requires memorization of the capitals of all Asian countries.	1. Requires knowledge of trends and changes in politics and society in the major geographic regions of Asia.
2. Requires a written test on the capitals.	2. Requires a series of projects which might include interviewing a person from Asia, writing a play about a particular series of events in an Asian country, scanning the newspaper for reports on Asia, or uses a journal to document thought’s, reflections, and ideas and articles or books read about Asia. Alternatively, students select an Asian country, say Indonesia, and plan a three week itinerary for a visit to Indonesia, naming key sites and documenting their history as they develop a budget for such a trip and integrate all the facts in a way that demonstrates the student’s knowledge about Indonesia in particular and Asia in general.

pg 47

Theme One: The Value and Importance of Assessment

The development and application of authentic assessment in various disciplines or areas of study leads us to see the value and importance of assessment. Lund (1997) has written in the area of physical education and authentic assessment. Lund asks us to think about the lifeguard at the pool. How did the lifeguard achieve competence?

Pg 48

Wiggins (1993b) explains why is it futile to try to teach everything of value to students by the time they leave high school Rather, he argues, we should instill in students a deep love for learning, a burning desire to question and keep questioning throughout their lives. This observation, of course, resonates with the writing of John Dewey.

Pg 49

Wiggins advises that students must be enabled to know and learn about their own ignorance, gain control over the resources available for making progress and then take pleasure in lifelong learning. An authentic education, then, would be one of the developing the “habits” of mind and “high standards of craftsmanship,” given the reality of one’s own ignorance. Thus, this view stands in contrast to the prevailing view that the more we know, the more we should test in order to show what we can recall for those typical tests.

According to Wiggins (1993), real learning takes place when students use judgement to complete an authentic task so as to show their level of understanding of a given subject. He begins with the question “what is performance?”

He differentiates between drilled skills an performance by use of a soccer game example. In soccer, and many other sports, practice drills are the beginning of every practice session. However, if a student practices only these drills, can we say that the student knows how to perform in a game of soccer?

Chapter two

Standards, Assessment, and Critical Thinking

pg 57

What might standards really look like for critical thinking? At the very least, we would have to include something like this:

1. Students and teachers determine the extent of information needed;
2. Students access this information effectively;
3. Students evaluate information and sources critically;
4. Students incorporate selected information into their knowledge base;
5. Students understand the complexity of a given topic area; Students are active in redirecting knowledge to create new knowledge;
6. Students continue to raise the bar in terms of personal growth, and use of their imagination and creativity.

Chapter Five: Conclusions and Thoughts for the Future

pg 102

Authentic assessment requires what John Dewey described as “habits of mind.” Children who have solid habits of mind resonate with authentic assessment techniques. They learn

1. from experience;
2. in a given context;
3. in a given learning community;
4. with a responsibility for improving their own performance;
5. Demonstrating through a performance task what a student can do.
6. That this approach would lead to understanding a concept of acquiring knowledge and not merely memorizing an isolated fact, a test maker, who is not a professional educator, deems to be a correct answer.

Authentic assessment is a much more rigorous approach to teaching and learning.