Realistic Authenticity

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Education, 2017

Authenticity is a concept with an impressive history in Western philosophy and a significant hold on the modern imagination. Inseparable from conceptions of truth and individual fulfillment, authenticity remains a powerful ideal, even as it eludes precise definition. Recently it has also become an organizing principle for many educational initiatives. Education, like authenticity, is opposed to dissimulation, ignorance, manipulation, and related states of misalignment between truth and experience. There is widespread enthusiasm for the promotion of authenticity across different types of education and in the personal identity of educators and students. Most of the scholarly literature pertaining to authenticity in education falls outside the scope of philosophical inquiry. But in all cases, the pursuit of authenticity in education rests on various philosophical assumptions about the nature of truth, reality, ethics, and ultimately, the aims of education. With the influence of Dewey and 20th Century progressive movements in education, authenticity entered the vernacular of educational theory and practice. Attention to the relationship between learning environments and the “real” world has generated pervasive commitments to authentic learning, authentic pedagogies, authentic curriculum, and authentic assessment practices. Here, ‘authenticity’ is used to track the verisimilitude of an educational practice with respect to some external reality. It constitutes an ontological claim about levels of “reality” as well as an epistemological attitude toward learning as the construction of knowledge. In this respect, authenticity intersects debates about constructivism and relativism in education. Likewise, teachers are exhorted to be authentic qua teachers, elevating their true selves above institutional anonymity as a key part of effective teaching. This phenomenon trades on the values of truthfulness and autonomy that are prized in Western modernity but also problematized in the personal identity and ethics literature. The authenticity of students has also been championed as an educational aim, even as the methods for eliciting authenticity in others have been criticized as self-defeating or culturally limiting. Personal authenticity stands in a contested relationship to autonomy, which has been promoted as the key aim of liberal education. The project of creating authentic people through education remains an intense site of research and debate, with important implications for educational ethics and liberal values.

Presented at Shimer College (Waukegan, IL), March 28, 2003

2007

This article is intended to briefly overview the concept of authenticity which cannot be defined similarly for all contexts, as we confront various contexts around the world, each with their unique characteristics. In other words, authenticity is a relative concept, materialized within each context with the interaction of its partici pants. Also, following Chavez' (1998) comments, authenticity cannot be defined as anything really existing in the outside world because any text taken out of its original context and away from its intended audience automatically becomes less authentic. Learners' proficiency levels and their positive attitudes towards the text are other aspects in this regard. Authentic materials require at least two features: communicative potential and relevance. The binary division of authenticity is no longer relevant and efficient; rather, it is to be considered in relation to the context where the material is used. Therefore, literature on authenticity suggests that authen ticity is subject to pragmatic variation which cannot be defined in a vacuum and that its defining characteris tics lie in the context. This argument has implications for teacher education and material development be cause of the changing situation of ELT practice around the world. The final conclusion is that the notion of authenticity within the global context must be considered in the light of the pragmatic appropriateness of the materials used and the interaction tasks set in relation to learners' needs and interests. The knowledgeable teacher is the nexus for empowering materials and tasks that are 'authentic' for their specific groups of learn ers.

Applied Linguistics, 2010

This study probed the conceptualization of (in)authenticity in teaching and the way it could be enacted in pedagogical practices. The participants were a purposive sample of 20 Iranian university teachers. Data were collected using in-depth interviews, field notes, and observation. The collected data were analyzed through the lens of hermeneutic phenomenology. The results revealed that authenticity in teaching consisted of themes of being one's own self, pedagogical relationships, contestation, and ultimate meaning which were enacted in the participants' practices through their sense of responsibility, awareness of their possibilities, understanding of pedagogical relationships, self-reflection, critical reflection, and critical hope. Inauthenticity was also conceptualized as teacher-centered classroom manifested in the monologic discourse and traditional assessment which could confirm the dialogical nature of authenticity in teaching. For the participants of the present study, authenticity involved the constant process of becoming that deepened their understanding of themselves and others. Further findings are discussed in the paper. Keywords Authenticity in teaching Á Inauthenticity in teaching Á Hermeneutic phenomenology Á The process of becoming Ramin Ramezanzadeh is an ''Independent Researcher''. & Akram Ramezanzadeh

2012

The paper attempts to bridge informal and formal learning by leveraging on affordance structures associated with informal environments to help learners develop social, cognitive, and metacognitive dispositions that can be applied to learning in classrooms. Most studies focus on either learning in formal or informal contexts, but this study seeks to link the two. The paper proposes three tenets to augment de-contextualized learning in schools by putting back the: (a) tacit, (b) social-collective, and (c) informal. This paper seeks to advance the argument for a consideration of how formal learning might be made more authentic by leveraging the affordances of informal learning. Two case examples are illustrated. The first case shows learners operating in a virtual environment in which—through the collaborative manipulation of terrain—adopt the epistemic frame of geomorphologists. The case seeks to illustrate how the tacit and social-collective dimensions from the virtual environment might be incorporated as part of the formal geography curriculum. In the second case, interactions between members of a school bowling team highlight the contextualized and authentic metacognitive demands placed on learners/bowlers, and how these demands are re-contextualized—through metacognitive brokering—to the formal curriculum. Productive linkages are made between informal and formal learnings and anchored through learners’ authentic experiences.

2009

To meet the intentions of the New Zealand Curriculum 2007 teachers must critically reflect on their role and their ideas of what is 'best practice' for teaching and learning in the twenty-first century. In this post-modern age the teacher's role has changed considerably and there is now, more than ever, a need for much greater transparency, accountability and collaborative practice within education. While famous philosophers and theorists of the past including Plato, Rousseau and Dewey have expounded the ideals of authenticity and authentic engagement, it is only in more recent times with the spread of constructivism that authenticity has gained more favour.

Educational Technology Research and Development, 2012

The paper attempts to bridge informal and formal learning by leveraging on affordance structures associated with informal environments to help learners develop social, cognitive, and metacognitive dispositions that can be applied to learning in classrooms. Most studies focus on either learning in formal or informal contexts, but this study seeks to link the two. The paper proposes three tenets to augment de-contextualized learning in schools by putting back the: (a) tacit, (b) social-collective, and (c) informal. This paper seeks to advance the argument for a consideration of how formal learning might be made more authentic by leveraging the affordances of informal learning. Two case examples are illustrated. The first case shows learners operating in a virtual environment in which-through the collaborative manipulation of terrain-adopt the epistemic frame of geomorphologists. The case seeks to illustrate how the tacit and social-collective dimensions from the virtual environment might be incorporated as part of the formal geography curriculum. In the second case, interactions between members of a school bowling team highlight the contextualized and authentic metacognitive demands placed on learners/ bowlers, and how these demands are re-contextualized-through metacognitive brokering-to the formal curriculum. Productive linkages are made between informal and formal learnings and anchored through learners' authentic experiences.

2007

This qualitative narrative inquiry was driven by my desire to further explore my personal discovery that my utilization of educational technologies in teaching and learning environments seemed to heighten a sense of creativity, which in turn increased reflective practice and authenticity in my teaching. A narrative inquiry approach was used as it offered the opportunity to uncover the deeper meanings of authenticity and reflection as participants' personal experiences were coconstructed and reconstructed in relationship with me and in relationship to a social milieu. To gain further insight into this potential phenomenon, I engaged in 2 conversational interviews with 2 other teachers from an Ontario College in a large urban centre who have utilized educational technologies in their teaching and learning communities and I maintained a research journal, constructed during the interview process, to record my own emerging narrative accounts, reflections, insights and further questions. The field texts consisted of transcriptions of the interviews and my reflective journal. Research texts were developed as field texts were listened to multiple times and texts were examined for meanings and themes. The educational technologies that both women focused on in the interview were digital video of children as they play, learn and develop and the use of an audible teacher voice in online courses. The invitation given to students to explore and discover meaning in videos of children as they watched them with the teacher seemed to be a catalyst for authenticity and a sense of synergy in the classroom. The power of the audible teacher voice came through as an essential component in online learning environments to offer students a sense of humanness and connection with the teacher. Relationships in both ii online and face to face classrooms emerged as a necessary and central component to all teaching and learning communities. The theme of paradox also emerged as participants recognized that educational technologies can be used in ways that enhance creativity, authenticity, reflection and relationships or in ways that hinder these qualities in the teaching and learning community. Knowledge of the common experiences of college educators who utilize educational technologies, specifically digital video of children to educate early childhood educators, might give meaning and insight to inform the practice of other teachers who seek authentic, reflexive practice in the classroom and in on line environments.

Teaching in Higher Education, 2017

This conceptual paper is concerned with the discursive and applied attributes of 'authenticity' in higher education, with a particular focus on teaching science through student research. Authenticity has been mentioned in passing, claimed or discussed by scholars in relation to different aspects of higher education, including teaching, learning, assessment and achievement. However, it is our position that in spite of the growing appeal of authenticity, the use of the term is often vague and uncritical. The notion of authenticity is complex, has a range of meanings and is sometimes contested. Therefore, we propose here a practiceoriented and theoretically-informed framework for what constitutes authenticity within the context of teaching through research. This framework brings together aspects of the 'real world,' existential self, and embedded meaning, and aligns them with different outcomes relating to knowledge and to students. Different models of teaching through research with conflicting claims to authenticity are used to illustrate the framework.